does anyone know what would happen if u pour 20 gallons of liquid nitrogen into 20 gallons of magma?ive been wondering for sometime now.and if u no a site that gives a brief explaination please tell me.and finaly please give me a good explaination and if scientist have tried.ohh and if u send anything dumb for points ill vote u down.
2007-09-23 08:00:19 · 5 answers · asked by reinhart_fagel 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Earth Sciences & Geology
The liquid nitrogen would evaporate in a huge cloud and the magma would be relatively untouched. The reason is that the latent heat of vaporization of nitrogen is small compared to the heat capacity of a solid. I'm going to convert your example to metric units just to make it easier for me.
10 liters of liquid nitrogen (LN2) has a mass of around 8 kg. The latent heat of vaporization of nitrogen is around 200 kJ/kg (this is readily available using google). So the vaporization of 10 L of LN2 would take 1600 kJ of energy.
The heat capacity of magma is 1.7 kJ/(kg-K) (see reference below). 10 L of magma would have a mass of 25 kg. so there is around 40 kJ/K in 10 L of magma. For grins, assume the magma starts out at 1500 K, it would take a 40 K cooling for the magma to deliver 1600 kJ of energy to the LN2, leaving the magma at at toasty 1460 K, which is a very small change in the overall temperature.
You would be much better off throwing water on the magma, water has a much higher latent heat of vaporization, over an order of magnitude larger than LN2.
Heat capacity of magma:
http://books.google.com/books?id=NmvMrnxtHecC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=heat+capacity+magma&source=web&ots=1pj02ezbNo&sig=hTPYkVSnhBOvccBnDyyLuCydqHw
2007-09-23 18:25:40 · answer #1 · answered by gcnp58 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Heat Capacity Of Liquid Nitrogen
2016-10-29 06:52:03 · answer #2 · answered by satbar 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I'm no scientist, but here goes: First, liquid nitrogen is only a liquid at a cold so low we can hardly grasp such a thing, so just getting it to where magma is would be a huge problem. I suspect the expansion of the nitrogen to a gas would be very rapid - like an explosion. The main physical reaction of this woud be a huge and powerful pressure wave generated by that explosion, and although there would be no fire, the magma would be flung far and wide. With 20 gallons of liquid nitrogen, I also suspect you could get pretty much the same reaction with only a cup of magma!
2007-09-23 08:27:48 · answer #3 · answered by geezer 1 · 1⤊ 0⤋
it should turn some of the magma to stone and the liquid nitrogen would evaporate
2007-09-23 08:11:17 · answer #4 · answered by simc87 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
there would be one heck of a reaction and if you were anywhere close you wouldn't survive.
2007-09-25 06:37:25 · answer #5 · answered by Loren S 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋