 The internet really is a curious thing because this whole idea started as a joke. To celebrate MrBeast having 20 million subscribers, he should plant 20 million trees. It's a crazy idea. 20 million is a lot of trees. But then the idea took root. Mark Rober got involved and then a bunch of other YouTubers got involved and... It looks like we're gonna do it. So the Arbor Day Foundation are experts when it comes to planting trees quickly and efficiently and what's really exciting is that they have agreed that during this fundraiser, for every dollar, just one dollar we raise, they are going to plant a tree. So naturally then our goal is to raise $19,999,620. Why that number you might say? Well, because in addition to making our own contribution to the campaign, which you can find the full details for down below guys, please do give. This is a really important cause. We are going to be getting our boots and our hands dirty by planting this. 380 trees. Of course, though, this is Linus Tech Tips, not some like, you know, shovel and, you know, boots operation. So we needed a techie way to plant trees. Meet the TreeZooka. This is our extremely detailed and super professional design for a tree planting cannon. And I'm going to show you guys exactly how it works. So step one is to load the trees. The original design for the TreeZooka was to... Damn, I guess I can't really get that out anymore, can I? The original design for the TreeZooka allowed for us to shoot just one tree at a time, but we figured, hey, if one is good, then two must be twice as good. Step two is to load our combustion chamber at the back of the cannon with acetylene. This is going to propel our trees at about 460 feet per second. 40 feet per second lower than when it's classified as a firearm. Step three, assume a comfortable firing position. This thing's going to give some kick thanks to the potato that's also loaded into the barrel. And step four, have someone you really trust. Whoa! Whoa! Okay, the design might need a little work. Did you not warn me because you assumed I knew or to f*** with me? Get a brand new virtual credit card number each time you use it when you shop with privacy. Click the link below and get $5 off your first purchase. That's like free money. Okay, so obviously that wasn't going to work, but we have a new plan and by the end of this video, the 400 sapling trees that we have loaded in the back of the truck are going to be embedded in the ground one way or another. The conventional way to plant trees goes as follows. You clear the debris from the area that you want to plant the tree, dig a small hole. Oh man, that's nice easy ground. I'm barely even gonna have to dig a hole just like make a gap pretty much. Then, unless your tree already has it integrated like ours does. Ours doesn't. It doesn't? So we need fertilizer then. What's this? You're gonna want to insert some fertilizer into the hole. This is some frozen daikon. There we go. Then you just put the tree into the hole level with the... There we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Replace any dirt that you moved and stomp all around it to pack the dirt back in. So that's nice and supported and upright. And that's it. The job's done. Now in some places, you can use this tube looking thing to assist the tree. You can use this tube looking thing to assist in your tree planting endeavors. But here in BC, the tougher soil will jam them in an instant. Pretty much everyone we talked to said to just stick with a shovel. Great advice. If you're some kind of caveman, we still think there's room for improvement. For one, using the shovel and planting the tree, it's not super ergonomic. You're gonna be bending down constantly, tiring yourself out. Who needs that? And two, there's a key component missing. FUD. Can you imagine how many people would sign up to plant trees if they did it like this? Everyone would sign up for tree planting if it was like this. Let's talk about the improvements we've made to our tree planting cannon design. First, we changed over from acetylene to compressed gas. While acetylene does pack quite a punch, it is, well, an extremely explosive gas. And one of our key design goals here is to not die if something goes wrong. Our main inspiration came from Bill Chernoff, who, as far as we can tell, owns the world's only potato chain gun. And he was kind enough to give us some advice on how to make an air cannon like no other. Although we would have liked to create a magazine for automatic firing like his cannon, it isn't necessary for us to shoot quite that fast. And apparently his mechanism took a lot of tuning and prototyping to get just right. So we decided for a simple breech-style loading mechanism, here we go, which should still be fast enough for us to plant several trees per minute. Being able to reload quickly is no good though if you don't have the muscle to back it up. Meet the muscle. This tank holds compressed nitrogen gas at 2000 psi. Then our solenoid valve right here controls the flow to, here it is, this mini tank right here. Then another solenoid valve at the end opens up to fire, or as we call it, make the fun happen. Both of these solenoids are controlled by this simple electrical box right here. This little pressure release valve here will make sure that our pressure doesn't get over 300 psi, the limit of our solenoid valves. And although by swapping out a couple of components we could get much higher pressure, I think you guys are going to agree that it's got quite enough punch as it is. Are we armed right now? I'm firing my laser baby! Three, two, one! Wow! Well that potato disintegrated. Three, two, one, go for it! Wow! Let's plant some trees, shall we? Beautiful! Oh no, I want to use the tube. I want to use the tube! Nope, you have to line up the tube. Okay, fine. Fire in the hole! Nope! You ever want more? Beautiful! Planted! The actual amount of digging was basically zero, and we've embedded our bit of frozen zucchini here right next to the roots. This thing is perfectly positioned for success right now. Okay, next round! Okay, yep. Can I press the button this time? Sure can. Fire in the hole! My finger is numb, okay? Hold on, let me just widen the hole here a little bit. Gorgeous! Ain't that a thing of beauty, ladies and gentlemen. All right, back it up! Wait, does the turning serve any purpose? No. Oh, you were just having fun? No. Okay. All right, so what all we got here? Is this a potato? A potato. Beautiful! A little bit of frozen potato in there. Put that potato in there. If you're only at like 90 psi right now, you want to bring it around to like 250. Oh. There you go. Fire in the hole! Wow! We definitely hit something that time. Yep, that was a root. Only do like 90 psi or so this time. 90 or so? Quick press. Armed! And fire the hole! Fire the hole! Okay, so I think the stem actually did end up a little damaged that time. But, okay, let's try it. Let's try that again. Here, let's go maybe six feet this way. I love that this one's bullet shaped. All right. Charging. Get a tree in there. Oh, wow, look at that. This is so damn stupid. Let me just loosen you up a little bit here. You might have to shift just a bit. You gotta use your sight there, bud. That's probably fine. That ain't gonna heal. She ain't gonna make it past the winner there. We're still learning. We're still ironing out the details. Let's do another. What if we leaned the whole thing down and we muzzle loaded it? So we put the pellet in from the end and then we put the tree in from here. And then that way the pellet can kind of clear the path for the tree a little, maybe. I'm not that far up. This is this guy. Well, we did the calculations and simulation and it all works. It actually kind of worked minus like the tree dye. Yeah, the craters about the right size. So that actually brings us into something we had wanted to discuss in this video. Lockheed Martin had the idea of carpet bombing trees and YouTube channel I Did A Thing actually made a great video about rocket trees. And we liked the idea, but our concern was that it was going to be pretty difficult, even with the proposed solution of creating like a papier-mâché or some kind of outer protective casing around each tree because it's just a lot of force. Also, we didn't go that route because it would have been very time consuming to create 400 paper-mâché bullets. Overall, we don't think that planting trees with a cannon actually makes a ton of sense, especially because there's so much stuff that you have to drag around with you. But we thought you guys might like some fun facts about our tree cannon. It's got an approximate barrel velocity of 140 meters per second or 460 feet per second, an ideal angle of launch of 36 degrees, a distance without drag of over 1.5 kilometers, a distance with drag of about 600 meters. I mean, all of that is basically just a guess since it's hard to say how stable the flight of our projectile would be and how much, you know, a hypothetical tree could change the drag coefficient, etc. But we think it's safe to say that our projectile could go anywhere between 300 meters and one kilometer. So this was clearly more about having fun than it was about making a practical tree cannon, but I don't want that to distract from why this is so important. In the Amazon, we've managed to destroy about half of the mature rainforests, and tropical deforestation contributes a staggering 20% of world greenhouse gas emissions. Deforestation also has a wide variety of unpleasant effects like the land heats up faster without a forest, soil without roots embedded in it erodes faster, dries up faster, and contains less nutrients for other plants. Oh, and also any animals that used to live in a forest that's gone, they're all dead now. But the thing is, we aren't planting trees in the Amazon. We're up in Canada, so you might wonder what's the point of planting trees here? Well, half of the world's forest growth potential is actually found in just six countries, with Canada being third on that list. And when you're concerned about things like air quality and climate change, growing new forests is incredibly important no matter where it is. A mature forest is roughly carbon neutral, but as a new forest grows, the carbon is stored in trees, providing a total reduction in the overall carbon in the atmosphere worldwide. That means that planting new forests in North America and Russia is a really great way to combat climate change, even if there are already plenty of forests there. So get out there, have some fun, plant some trees, and if you can't, or you don't feel like it, that's fine too, just go to teamtrees.org to donate. For every dollar that you guys contribute, Linus Media Group is going to match you up to $10,000. And since we have no way of tracking how much you guys contribute, I guess we'll just write the check today and go with the honor system here. Speaking of honorable, my transition to our sponsor for today's video. Knock knock! Hopefully it's not those guys. With the Ring Doorbell Kit, you can pre-screen anyone who's at your front door, because guys, the year is not 1990 anymore and those peoples are so passe. The Ring Kit includes their Video Doorbell 2, Spotlight Cam Battery, and Solar Security Sign. The Video Doorbell 2 has a motion sensor camera with adjustable range. It's got 1080p HD resolution and 160 degrees of vision. It features 2-way audio, so you can talk to whoever's at the door, and it's battery or 8-24 volt AC doorbell wiring powered. The Spotlight Camera is also 1080p HD, also has 2-way talk, it's got LED lights and is battery or solar powered, and it's got a siren. The audio is great because you can turn away unwelcome guests, or you can tell them to come right in, if they're an unwelcome guest that you want to tell to come right in, like your in-laws. You can instruct a delivery driver that you'll be a second to get there before he runs away, leaving a note and you gotta get your package tomorrow, and you can just generally get peace of mind. So check out the Ring Kit, it's compatible with iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows, and you can get it today at the link in the video description. So hopefully you guys enjoyed this video and you're motivated to go get behind a really great cause. Otherwise, well, you know where that button is.