Testing Viral TikTok Hacks To See If They Work

You shouldn’t believe everything you see on the internet. Which is why today I’ve rounded up some of the most viral TikTok life hacks to test whether or not they actually work. From color changing sodas and fruits, to potato power and Nutella’s big secret, let’s put TikTok to the test!

DIY Snow

We all love snow and if you desire some DIY snow, this TikTok life-hack is for you.

According to some of the people online, all you need is some salt, some sugar and some water and supposedly it’s what makes snow. We tried that out and the results are frustrating.

There was no flurry of snow, only a plate fully of sweet and salty water. Logically, that makes perfect sense, given that both salt and sugar dissolve in water, hardly the forecast for a snow storm. Not only that, but if you look closely, it’s pretty clear that the guy in the original video used some kind of instant-snow powder, misleading us all for the sake of views.

Egg Hacks

There are countless ways to have eggs fried, poached, scrambled, boiled, or as seen in this next TikTok hack below, levitating.

As the clip above suggests, you can make an egg magically levitate just by placing it upright under a flowing stream of water. Of course, I was initially skeptical, but stranger things have happened in physics. Could that be some strange side-effect of surface tension, or the unfathomable forces of flowing fluids? I had to know, so I gave it a try.

It went about as well as anyone would imagine, would not recommend. As was helpfully proven by another TikToker called Clifton Dean, all that really takes is a thin piece of string tied between your faucet and egg, filmed from an angle that renders the thread invisible. Nothing but trickery there!

There's also another hack which claims if you spray an egg with deodorant, it will, by some divine intervention, transform into a bouncy egg. My expectations were low for that one. However, in the name of content, I did as I was told and doused my egg in enough spray to rival a teenage boy.

Though it seemed no amount could make my egg bounce, as it inevitably cracked. Considering rubber eggs are easy to acquire, and a small price to pay for 5 minutes of TikTok fame, we all know what’s really going on in those clips.

My eggy endeavor was not over yet though, as another hack suggested that covering an egg in toothpaste for 24 hours would not only make it squidgy and stretchy, but translucent too. Jaded by my previous experience, I wasn’t exactly hopeful that this new one would work and well, it didn’t work. That is, the egg remained fully solid and crack able, albeit with a minty fresh aroma. It’s almost impressive, the way people come up with new ways to lie online.

Styrofoam And Nail Polish Remover

For our next cool science experiment all you need is some Styrofoam and nail polish remover! According to the next TikTok hack, when you place Styrofoam in nail polish remover, it melts away right before your eyes like magic. Or, rather, turns into a gloopy pile of slop. But still, pretty cool!

Putting it to the test, I got my hands on some Styrofoam balls, nail polish remover, and got to experimenting. This experiment actually worked! But what’s actually is going on there?

To put it simply, nail polish remover, AKA acetone, breaks the bonds between the chains of molecules that give Styrofoam or polystyrene, its solid form. That allows the air trapped within the foam to escape, reducing its volume enormously and letting it dissolve into a liquid or to "melt".

Clear Coca Cola Hack

Coca Cola’s black as tar shade is part of what makes it so recognizable. While that distinctive hue is a product of the coke’s caramel food coloring, there’s a TikTok hack that can apparently turn Coke completely transparent. According to the hack, it’s as simple as dissolving a spoonful of vitamin C powder in some Coke, and as you can see below, it turns as clear as water.

My interest was piqued so, I grabbed some Coke, vitamin C powder, and got to mixing. Like Mentos in a Coke, the vitamin C did nothing but cause an uncontrollably fizzy explosion. Of all the times I’ve been tricked, that was the trickiest. But what’s the science there? Well, interestingly, it’s actually not a chemical reaction, but a physical reaction.

Coke, being a carbonated beverage, contains a lot of dissolved gas that wants to form bubbles, or fizz, but needs a surface to form on. The microscopic surface of a reactive adversary of Coke, be it Vitamin C powder, or the more classic Mentos, is quite jagged and uneven, which makes them an excellent site for forming a rapid explosion of bubbles. A similar reaction happens if you add sand to Coke.

So, to cut a long story short, it was the rough texture of the vitamin C powder’s molecules alongside the additional CO2 released as the powder began to dissolve, that caused the Coke to explode. As for the original TikTok clip, what seems more likely is that it wasn’t actually Coke in the bottle, but iodine mixed with water.

To put simply, if vitamin C or another antioxidant is added to iodine, it will cause bonded pairs of iodine molecules to split up, resulting in a color change to transparency. Just check out this TikTok clip below, where even just a skin product containing vitamin C actually managed to turn iodine clear!

Still on the topic of bubbling reactions, there’s another little TikTok trick. If you pour a layer of oil over Coke and then plop in a few Mentos, you can create your own mini lava lamp display! So I gave it a try. Refreshingly, it actually works!

Due to oil and water refusing to mix, the oil forms a barrier through which the carbon dioxide bubbles can force their way to the surface, providing more resistance than cola or air, and hence taking on a much calmer, lava-lamp like motion. All the fun of the fizz, without the mess.

Pop A Balloon With Orange Peel

Let’s keep things gaseous now with the next hack, which claims, by the power of science, you can pop a balloon without even touching it. Just by cutting a bit of peel from an orange and squeezing it over an inflated balloon can apparently cause the balloon to explode.

To my disappointment, it didn’t work for me. But surprisingly, I actually don’t think that is a case of misleading TikTok deception. Having done the research, science fully backs up the hack. The thing is, orange peel contains a compound known as limonene, which is able to dissolve rubber and all it takes is one small hole for a balloon to pop!

However, limonene has a harder time dissolving rubber compounds that are strengthened, like vulcanized rubber, so it’s possible my balloons were made of a tougher material. Or, the small satsuma I used was, pathetically incapable of producing enough limonene on command. Either way, my disappointment is palpable.

Here's another cool balloon hack. With a water-balloon, electrical tape and a quick stabbing, the water flows out so seamlessly that it literally looks like it’s frozen.

It’s so satisfying, how could I not give it a try? With a waterfilled balloon, I got to taping up that bad boy and gave it a prick. Though, while I failed, with the slowed down footage we can see that the brief, overly-thick flow from the excessively large split in the balloon actually did have a nice, smooth, glassy quality to it. If the hole had just been smaller, the flow would’ve probably been stable enough to look frozen.

Orange Fanta With Toothpaste

According to the next hack, you can create your own custom shade of Fanta. Just by adding some toothpaste to the orange soda and shaking it up, it will cause it to magically change different colors. I equipped myself with some very fancy European Fanta, and toothpaste, and I got to shaking.

Shake as I might, though, I was completely shocked to find that the toothpaste didn’t turn my Fanta into a color-changing light! However, the orange hue of the light reflected off our TikToker’s bottle doesn’t change when the liquid inside does. That’s because he color-shifted the hue of the soda in editing software, but neglected the finer details.

Blue Watermelon

Melons come in all different varieties but one melon you won’t see on the store shelves, is a blue melon. Well, be prepared to be astonished, as the next hack claims that if you fill a watermelon with blue soda, it will transform the melon into a radiant hue of blue.

To see if the hack is legitimate or not, I got some legitimately blue soda, filmed my friend cutting a hole into a watermelon, pouring the soda in, letting it rest, pouring out the soda, and cutting a piece. To my Surprise it was not blue.

However, there’s the very obvious fact that we can quite clearly see the blue color-edited video masking overlapping the edge of the melon skin in this guy’s video.

Butter Squeezing Hack

It's very frustrating when you’re at a restaurant and they give you a tiny foil packet of butter that is usually rock solid. Then when you try to butter your toast, it just tumbles around the bread in one solid piece and doesn’t spread. Well, courtesy of TikTok, here's the solution! All you need to do is stab the butter with your fork, creating four holes in the foil. Then, squeeze the butter and watch as it effortlessly strings out like spaghetti.

As you can see from my recreation, it does indeed work but it’s mainly only beneficial if you warm the butter up a little in your hands beforehand, to soften it! With that, the butter is now way more spreadable and will evenly glide along the bread.

Pour Soda With Zero Bubbles

Similarly, another annoying scenario we’ve all found ourselves in, is when you’re pouring soda and you have to stop to wait for the fizzing to stop. Well, TikTok has just the hack up its sleeve. According to a TikTok, instead of tilting the bottle over the glass to pour, you should actually just hold the bottle fully upside down, which allows the Coke to chug out fizz free. It works pretty well. I’ll definitely be using that one from now on to reign in that unruly fizz!

Growing Gummy Bears

According to a TikTok, if you put any kind of gelatin based candy jellies into water for an extended period of time, they will grow up to an alleged 300% in size. With my favorite candies in hand, Haribo's, I left them to stew in the water for a few hours. And when I returned, well, it was clear to see they’d grown considerably.

Be that as it may, they’d also become very delicate and mushy, meaning they weren’t the most appetizing. That process occurs in gelatin based candies as the water molecules can seep into the intermolecular spaces in the gelatin causing it to swell. So, the candies might have been bigger, but not necessarily better.

Secret Knife In Nutella Jars

Who doesn’t love Nutella? Some eat it by the spoonful, which is why this next hack could be particularly useful! According to the video below, Nutella jars allegedly have a secret compartment in the lid, containing a mini plastic knife that can be used for all your Nutella opening and scooping needs.

When I saw the above footage, I just had to try it but my excavating proved fruitless. While there was indeed a cardboard disc, presumably to help form a seal for freshness, the lid beneath it was empty. There are countless examples of people claiming to find that little lid knife online, but I was reassured to find I wasn’t just missing out: Nutella officials have officially debunked the claim, exposing yet another blatant TikTok lie!

Pineapple Hack

When I came across our next hack I got pretty excited. Apparently, if you bash a pineapple about and then roll it with some force, you can then pull perfectly bite sized segments from the pineapple, without the need to actually chop it up.

If that works, it could be a real gamechanger! So, after twisting the top off, I bashed the pineapple and rolled, and bashed a bit more, and rolled again, but no matter what, it just didn’t work. Now, it’s possible I had an under-ripe pineapple, but given that, if we slow down the TikToker’s footage above, we can see that the piece he grabs offers no resistance at all. It's safe to assume that is another scoop of baloney.

Charge Your Phone With A Potato

When your street’s power suddenly goes out, it’s only a matter of time until your phone battery dies and you are left in true darkness and the company of your own thoughts. However, there's a potentially life-saving hack that claims you can charge your phone using potatoes!

The claim is that if you join two potatoes by a coin and then plug a charger into one of the potatoes, it will then, by the power of potato, charge your phone. Given that outside of being food potatoes cannot generate usable electrical energy on their own, I wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence. But I went ahead and tried it anyway, and shockingly it didn’t work.

It’s a somewhat common misconception that potatoes can produce electricity. The truth is, they are just excellent conductors of electricity. In a science fair-style potato battery, they serve as a conductor of current between sources of copper and zinc; and you need a lot of them in series to even illuminate a tiny LED.

A single potato battery generates around 0.5 volts and 0.2 milliamps of electricity at best, so to power a 5 Volt, 2 Amp phone charger, you’d need around 100,000 potatoes! At least we learned something here. Still, unfortunately, potato power is not gonna be charging your phone anytime soon!

In a similar vein, another TikTok assures that you can also charge your phone with just a watermelon, Coke, and Mentos.

Because I’m nothing if not committed to the bit, I went ahead and cut a specifically heart shaped hole into the melon, filled it with Coke and a few Mentos, and watched with bated breath as I plugged in my phone charger. To absolutely no one’s surprise, it didn’t work. Which is a shame because I don’t know about you but I’m constantly finding myself with no electricity, while conveniently in possession of a watermelon, Coke, and Mentos.

Water Tornado With Battery

Staying on the crazy electrical side of TikTok, how many times have you wished that you could make a battery powered vortex tornado in your glass of water? I’ve never wished for that either. However, in the name of content, I decided to give that hack a try.

Unfortunately, there was no mega awesome super spiral water vortex there. Most likely, the TikTok’s results are simply the product of stirring up the water beforehand, getting a good spiral going using something like a milk frother, placing the batteries, before playing the whole thing in reverse, as demonstrated in the footage below by YouTuber Pingo.

How To Make Water Tornado With Battery | New DIY Craft Ideas 2022 by Pingo 🔥

Remove Confidential Information With Spray

When you receive a package that has your name and address on it, it’s usually best to peel it off before disposing of it to protect your personal data. That can be tedious though, so here’s a TikTok hack below, for speediness.

All you need is some perfume, and with a few sprays, the ink and all your precious information will disappear. That’s pretty neat and it happens because high-proof alcohol, like the ethanol found in perfume, can dissolve alcohol-based ink, making it easy to remove. But it's understandable if you don’t want to waste all your expensive perfume on that.

Wrapping A Ball

It’s fair to say balls can be pretty awkward. Imagine you’ve bought someone a soccer ball as a gift, how on earth are you going to wrap it without it looking like a complete and utter trainwreck? As TikToker Claire Williams skillfully demonstrated, start by measuring the amount of paper needed to fit the ball. You then want to do a few folds, to create a bag from the paper. With that done, you can roll the ball in and then, fold the excess paper and tape it in the center to create a fan design.

Granted, mine didn’t turn out quite as aesthetic as the one in the TikTok video, but I put that down to not cutting enough paper and being of the male species. Point is, that is definitely a hack worth having in your back pocket, should you have any balls you’re struggling to bag.

Scroll Using Your Voice

These days, we live in a world of constant stimulation. Using our phones, TV, computers, all the while doing basic daily tasks, such as eating and cleaning, it’s no surprise that our hands might often be full. However, coming up is a hack that means you can scroll your phone cruise control style, important to note, that particular method only applies to iPhones.

As demonstrated by TikToker Elly Awesome Tech, you can scroll using only your voice! And it legit works too. To unlock this feature, simply go on into your settings, find accessibility and then activate voice control. Once done, tap ‘customize commands’ and choose the custom option. You can choose whatever word or phrase you want, but for that, I’m gonna go with ‘swipe’.

After that, you wanna go ahead and click ‘action’ and then run custom gesture. In order to create a handsfree scroll action, simply swipe up. Having done all that, you’re now ready to save, sit back, shout your chosen word at your phone and enjoy some handsfree scrolling, meaning you can enjoy TikTok doom-scrolling whilst stuffing your face.

On the topic of nifty iPhone hacks, with scammers and frauds becoming an ever-increasing threat, cyber safety has never been more important. Which is why, after seeing a video from TikToker ‘Tech Hack Guy’, I urge anyone with an iPhone to dial ‘star, hash, 2, 1, hash.

When you call that secret code, it’ll bring up a page which shows your call settings. All settings should be marked as ‘disabled’, however if any are marked as ‘enabled’, it could mean that your calls are being forwarded somewhere else , in which case, you should contact your provider to resolve the issue immediately.

Make Slime With Soda And Glue

If you cast your mind back to around 2017, you may remember how slime was suddenly all the rage. And while it was available to buy at all good retailers, this next hack claims that you can make slime with just soda and school glue.

Following the hack, I tipped out a bit of the soda, squeezed in some glue, and got shaking. Shake as I might, though, it didn’t exactly seem to be taking on a slime-like consistency. Ultimately, I had no luck. And, unless there’s some glue physics the wider world isn’t aware of, the soda would only dilute the stickiness of the glue, making it very unlikely that that hack would actually result in slime. If you do want to make slime though you can use school glue, bicarbonate of soda, and contact lens cleaning solution. No need to add Fanta for flavor.

Frozen Honey

Yet another sticky internet craze of recent times is frozen honey, which gives it a thick and chewy consistency. However, this next hack suggests doing it with corn syrup and soda which, while it sounds like it could be a guaranteed trip to the dentist, does look pretty delicious.

So, I gave it a try! Having the pallet of a 13 year old boy, I chose to use some Prime energy drink, mixed it with my corn syrup, and left it to freeze. Only problem being, I may have left it to freeze a little too long. I’m not entirely sure if I left too much soda in my mixture, or the light corn syrup I used had too much water content, or if the amount of freezing time affected the outcome, but mine was frozen solid.

No amount of squeezing was about to change that. That being said, using a slightly less extreme freeze, that hack should work for both honey and corn syrup. As the water content in both gloopy substances is much lower than standard water or soda, their freezing temperature is lower, with honey, for example only freezing solid at negative 60 Fahrenheit!

So, while I can’t visually confirm that one, the science can. I’ll leave it up to you guys to have some fun, freeze some honey, and enjoy the results. But just remember, in most other cases, as we’ve learned pretty thoroughly today, don’t believe anything you see on TikTok!

I hope you were amazed at these TikTok hacks tested and reviewed! Thanks for reading.