liquid nitrogen all over your car?
Or used it to fight a fire?
Or even tried to cool down with it on a hot day?
Liquid nitrogen may look like a lot of fun
when you're watching people
dump everyday objects into it,
but it's actually a very dangerous substance.
And if someone were to dump you in it,
the fun would quickly come to an end.
Did you know that hundreds
of people voluntarily jumped
into a pool of liquid nitrogen?
It's true! It happened at a
promotional pool party in 2013.
By the end of the event,
one person was in a coma,
and eight others had been
rushed to the hospital.
Before we go jumping into a whole pool of it,
let's get to know liquid nitrogen a little better.
Liquid nitrogen, or LN2 as the cool kids call it,
is nonflammable, odorless, and colorless;
and it creates a notorious fog whenever
it's exposed to room temperature air.
It can be used to freeze and
transport food products,
to preserve sperm and eggs,
and to remove skin abnormalities,
among other things.
Recently, its use has
been embraced by the public,
with chefs and bartenders using it to
create fancy ice creams and cocktails.
With this new fascination with liquid nitrogen
and the fact that's its available to the public,
something terrible was bound to happen.
And that brings us back to the LN2
pool party that we mentioned before.
In an effort to create a
smoke effect to impress guests,
a resort in Mexico poured four large cans
of liquid nitrogen into the hotel pool.
It created an impressive fog, but
it also did something the
organizers didn't know about:
it displaced the oxygen around the pool.
And with no oxygen, guests couldn't breathe.
Luckily though, since it was just four cans
of liquid nitrogen that were added slowly,
it boiled off in the water before
it made contact with anyone's skin.
So how much worse would it have been
if the entire pool was filled
with pure liquid nitrogen?
Well, one thing's for sure. You
wouldn't want to go for a swim in it.
You'd be better off just
dipping your hand in quickly.
If you were to quickly submerge your hand
in liquid nitrogen, it would feel frozen but
there wouldn't be any frostbite or damage
because of something
called the Leidenfrost effect.
Because liquid nitrogen boils at the
very low temperature of -196 °C (−320 °F),
it will bead up and create a
layer of vapor underneath it
when it touches any surface
that's at room temperature,
similar to when you drop
water onto a flat heated surface.
So if you dipped your hand
inside liquid nitrogen,
a vapor barrier would immediately form
that protected your hand from freezing.
But the protective barrier
would only be temporary.
If you were planning on taking a long swim,
you wouldn't be coming back out.
Instead, you'd get severe
frostbite all over your body.
Then, the cold would work
its way deeper inside you.
Muscles, fat, your blood, and every other
liquid in your body would be frozen solid.
If you kept your head above the surface,
your body would freeze underneath
you, and you'd sink right down.
But hey, on the bright side,
there probably wouldn’t be
much pain involved since
the nerve damage would be so
severe and occur so quickly.
As terrible as this would
be for a living creature,
it could actually be
beneficial for a dead one.
Instead of being buried or cremated,
some people have chosen to have
their bodies frozen when they die.
It's called cryogenic freezing.
And the idea is that you can be frozen
and brought back to life at a later date.
But that's a topic for another WHAT IF.
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