I was reading a Calvin & Hobbes strip, where the prospect was raised of it being so cold that your sneeze would freeze, “so you could end up with a 3-d sculpture of your sneeze”.
Now that image is out of the way (enjoy your breakfast, BTW…), is it the case that the colder it is, the quicker liquid freezes? Does moving liquid freeze (i guess, it’s all moving until it freezes…)? Would a sneeze be moving too fast to freeze? Or is there a temperature where it would be so cold that any liquid, no matter how quickly it is “flowing”, freezes instantaneously.
I guess it would need to go from body temp. (>100F) to freezing (<32F) in a fraction of a second. Does it work on a sliding scale? The colder the ambient temperature, the quicker the transition from liquid to solid?
Spit has been reported to freeze before it hit the ground. Since a sneeze is mostly vapor and some larger particles, I see no reason why they could not freeze as they are expelled from the mouth and nose. The individual sizes of the particles would vary along with their freeze times. The entire contents of the sneeze would not freeze as a 3D shape, rather thousands of smaller 3D shapes.
If your sneeze did freeze in mid-air it would sort of sleet to the ground, not be suspended in air as a lovely saliva and mucous sculpture.
The colder the ambient temperature, the quicker the transition from liquid to solid. Rate of heat loss to ambient air is proportional to the temperature difference between the warm object and the colder ambient air (all other things being equal).
I don’t know how cold it would have to be for sneeze stuff to freeze in mid-air, but I would not be surprised to find it possible in normal winter temperatures in the coldest climates (-50F?).
Plus, surface area has got to figure into the equation somehow, so, since a sneeze has a lot more surface area than a spit of equal volume, the sneeze would freeze faster/at a higher temperature.
umm… i hate to point this out, but, when you sneeze the slaiva particles (which would be the part that would freeze) come out of your mouth taveling nearly 80 - 100 mph. They would fall to the ground, or get stuck on the guy in front of you, or the wall or whatever, at which point, of course it could freeze, just like anything else.
now if your OP is asking if it could sneeze before it hits the ground, I highly doubt that considering even if you are over 6 feet tall, at 80 mph it would take less than a second to hit the ground. for it to sneeze in that amount of time, it would have to be so cold that you yourself would risk freezing.
When I lived in A Very Cold Place, at temps below -10F, the moisture in my breath would freeze into tiny crystals right in front of my face. Created a sparkly effect in the early morning sun. I suspect most particles from a sneeze would be small enough to also freeze rapidly and turn into sparklies. A few larger particles would freeze on their way to the ground. You would have to be sneezing quite large bits for them to be “liquid” all the way to the ground, IMHO.
It is a hypothetical question based on a cartoon.
Assume that the sneezer was sneezing with his head tilted up.
Aslo the speed of the snot matters in that it should freeze faster if it is traveling at 80-100 miles per hour. The ambient body temperature heat would be shed faster at higher speeds. The snot would be continuously leaving heat behind as it encounters cooler air thus freezing faster. Small particles can freeze in a very short period of time. Examine a snow making machine on a ski hill. Water droplets are forced out at high speeds and turn into ice crystals before they hit the ground. Not much different then a sneeze.
Saw a couple demonstrations of extreme cold a few winters ago (film from Norway or other chilly locale) where the weatherman would throw a cup of boiling water into the air and voila, instant snowstorm - massive cloud of little snowflakes, no liquid spattered onto the ground.
Dunno how body-temperature snot compares to boiling water on the “How quickly does it freeze” scale but I think it’d have a good chance of crystalizing right quick, especially given Whuckfistle’s condition of head tilted up for optimum mucosal trajectory.
Only vaguely related but I have a friend who was an Antarctic researcher, he went out one day and it was so cold that within a few minutes he got frostbite on the INSIDE of his mouth. Said that was extraordinarily painful for a couple of days. You know you’re in trouble when you arrive and it’s 30 degrees. Below zero. Centigrade. And you find out that’s a record HIGH for the date.
I don’t know how cold is was for that demo in Norway, but I tried a similar experiment here in Alaska when it was -40°. I tossed a cup of cold water into the air, and was surprised when it all fell back on me as a cold, yet still very wet spray. Didn’t freeze.
My recollection was about -60 to -70; it was cold enough to get notice not only there but here in the states. Here’s a link (OK, it’s Time Magazine For Kids but cold is cold) describing an Alaskan winter cold enough to do it, -62.
Coldest I went through was -25F (-65F with the wind) in central IL. My roommates, Midwestern natives, turned up the heat and stayed inside. I went for a walk. Loved it.
Discovery did a special on the people who winter in the antartic keeping thigs going for the summer crew, they showed a guy take a full pot of boiling watter and throw it into the air, Ice cubes (well balls or whatever) were all that hit the ground.
