what is the coolest thing you have done with liquid nitrogen?

Question

For all of you working in lab situations, especially us upper years, will get to handle more and more substances on our own. For us most recently we have been allowed to use liquid nitrogen for our research. It was a matter of seconds before the use liquid nitrogen was no longer limited to our research.

For example:
- we already tried freezing and smashing almost everything in the lab
- pouring into beer, mixing and trying to drink it (it turns out it freezes it too quick)
- pranks (we froze someones entire backpack just before he left to TA a lab; we tried filling a super soaker with it, unfortunately the expansion broke the gun apart but we managed to fire it once and it looked like a flame thrower shooting white gas!)

So those of you who also have worked with liquid nitrogen as well, what kinda fun stuff did you do? Maybe we'll try them out!

Answer 1

The statute of limitations should be out on this one so I can tell it. I had read a book called "Maryjane Superweed's Garden of Grass" where she talked about freezing weed in dry ice to increase its potency. Hmmmm if dry ice would work, what would liquid nitrogen do!!!!! If you try it, it is phenominal, I don't think it increases the potency, but Wonder-of-Wonders, the seeds float. This means that you can take uncleaned weed and put it in LN2 and use a screen wire to take off all the seeds from the top. Easy and clean.

We once put a roach in LN2 for probably half an hour. When we took it out and let it thaw, it crawled away! The roaches will inherit the earth.

Didn't do this but I heard that at Yale one of the professors would do an annual Christmas chemistry demo day in which he would put a couple of goldfish in LN2, pull one out and put it in water at which time it would swim away. When he would start to put the other one in the water to join the first one, he would "accidentally" drop it and it would shatter into pieces. The SPCA must have not been too strong at this time.

LN2 ice cream is good, I have done this one for the Boy Scouts for a demo.

Throw it on the floor and watch it pick up dirt.

Finally a warning. I was using it to degas samples on a vacuum manifold because I was lazy and didn't want to make up a dry ice acetone mixture (actually dry ice propanol is better because it gets syrupy). I was trying to put O2 into a reaction vial when I forgot myself and left the stopcock open while a balloon of O2 was attached to the manifold. I heard a hissing and saw the balloon deflating. I dropped the LN2 Dewar down from the vial and saw to my horror that it was full of solidified O2! Not something I want to play with. I got the hell out of the lab until it warmed up.

Answer 2

Nitrogen does not have anything naturally cool about it. When producing atmospheric gases for sale (oxygen , CO2, nitrogen, argon), they get nitrogen by the "bucket load". So it is inexpensive to cool things with nitrogen. Helium is rare, and it is a few orders of magnitude more expensive to produce liquid helium than liquid nitrogen. Liquid hydrogen's cost is somewhere in between. Nitrogen and oxygen are diatomic molecules, so they have a very hard time absorbing or emitting in the infrared (even visible light), so they do not act like greenhouse gases.

Answer 3

i wish i could play with liquid nitrogen. i would maybe put a fish in there to see how fast it is frozen, but it seems kinda harsh, what did that fish do to me lol. i went to a presentation once and they put a balloon filled with air in liquid N and when they took it out after the liquid N evaporated the balloon looked like it had never been frozen. try it if you haven't already.

Answer 4

I haven't done it personally but a lab in the next building use to make ice cream in the summer. We share tanks with the rest of the building so there's a pretty tight watch on them...

Answer 5

I don't think my boss would let me play with the liquid nitrogen =( I just put cryovials w/cells in the liquid N2 tank.

Answer 6

I hear you can wash hands with it - it evaporates before touching them, creating a layer of gas that keeps you from freezing.

just make sure the trickle is really small, and do not blame me if you get hurt :)

Answer 7

I froze an apple, dumped it on the floor, and watched it shatter like glass.

Answer 8

Making Ice cream.... this will be the smoothest ice cream you've ever had as the crystals form so quickly that they stay minuscule.

Answer 9

use a rare earth magnets and freeze two of them put one on top of another so they repel and watch them spin add more to keep them going

Answer 10

Well not me but my freind froze his hand somewhat he moved it it was all bloody.