# Fun with Dry Ice? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 27, 2013, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641 "2013-07-27T00:48:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MacTech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MacTech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacTech)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/1 "2013-07-27T00:48:54Z")
Once a month, I get a couple chunks of dry ice in my Nutrisystem frozen food container, I think I look forward more to the DI than I do the food (it’s okay, not home cooking caliber, but no worse than fast food or other prepared ready to eat meals) Anyway, I’ve been thinking out fun things to do with DI, beyond the standard “submerge in warm water” So far, I’ve; Submerged it in water to make CO2 fog Put a small piece in soapy water to make “smoky bubbles” Flash-frozen veggie slices Made knife blades “sing” Put a small chunk in a soda bottle with water, it made carbonated water Extinguished a candle with the CO2 vapor falling on it Looking for more ideas, I’m planning to scale the fire extinguishing experiment up, light a fire in our outdoor fireplace, and put a chunk of DI on the top of the fireplace chimmney, the CO2 vapor should extinguish the fire… ---
**Author:** ![Schism](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@Schism](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schism)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/2 "2013-07-27T00:53:27Z")
Put a chunk in a 2 liter bottle with water, seal (with cap and duct tape maybe), back away. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/3 "2013-07-27T00:55:40Z")
Small chunk in a latex glove, tie a knot in the opening, wait a few hours. A balloon would work too, but not as funny as a giant hand. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/4 "2013-07-27T00:58:15Z")
> [@Schism](#): > > Put a chunk in a 2 liter bottle with water, seal (with cap and duct tape maybe), back away. In California, that’s making a bomb(criminal code). ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/5 "2013-07-27T01:04:37Z")
> [@Schism](#): > > Put a chunk in a 2 liter bottle with water, seal (with cap and duct tape maybe), back away. For some reason I didn’t see the parentheses and read that as “Put a chunk in a 2 liter bottle with water, seal with cap and duct tape, maybe back away.” It was much funnier that way. ---
**Author:** ![Schism](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@Schism](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schism)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/6 "2013-07-27T01:05:27Z")
Its ok, MacTechs location is Plural Z Alpha. ---
**Author:** ![MacTech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MacTech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacTech)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/7 "2013-07-27T01:28:41Z")
Plus, MacTech is nowhere even _NEAR_ Nannyfornia, err…Kalifornia, err… The People’s Republik of Kalifornia… And for some reason, MacTech has decided to refer to himself in the third person in this post… ---
**Author:** ![GaryM](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garym/32/241_2.png) [@GaryM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaryM)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/8 "2013-07-27T01:55:30Z")
> [@MacTech](#): > > Looking for more ideas, I’m planning to scale the fire extinguishing experiment up, light a fire in our outdoor fireplace, and put a chunk of DI on the top of the fireplace chimmney, the CO2 vapor should extinguish the fire… I’m guessing that the warm air rising in the flue will keep any CO2 from dropping down. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/9 "2013-07-27T02:27:57Z")
A little bit in a sealed container of cut up fresh fruit. You get carbonated fruit. ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/10 "2013-07-27T02:40:48Z")
I’ve put a small piece in my coffee cup and made everyone wonder what I was drinking that was smoking. Just be careful not to accidentally ‘drink’ the DI. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/11 "2013-07-27T04:19:18Z")
I haven’t tried it but i’d think you’d be able to make ice cream with it (assuming it’s food-grade dry ice). Chop up the dry ice into small pieces and drop it into some cold ice cream base and stir. I do this often with liquid nitrogen and it makes great ice cream (admittedly LN2 is much colder than dry ice). Something else I’ve always wanted to dry is to make a “cold plate”. Make a slurry of dry ice and pure alcohol and place a frying pan or similar on top. The dry ice/alcohol will chill the pan below freezing and then you can drop food onto the pan. Popsical pancakes! ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/12 "2013-07-27T04:26:54Z")
How much dry ice do you get? When I did Rocky Horror we did a trick with di that was rather fun. We ground it up in a food processor then put into popcorn buckets. Then for Eddie’s entrance we would toss the di high into the air, as it fell it created a wall of fog for Eddie to “crash” through. It was pretty damn cool. ---
**Author:** ![runcible\_spoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc29f/32.png) [@runcible\_spoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/runcible_spoon)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/13 "2013-07-27T16:56:41Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > I haven’t tried it but i’d think you’d be able to make ice cream with it (assuming it’s food-grade dry ice). Chop up the dry ice into small pieces and drop it into some cold ice cream base and stir. I do this often with liquid nitrogen and it makes great ice cream (admittedly LN2 is much colder than dry ice). > > Something else I’ve always wanted to dry is to make a “cold plate”. Make a slurry of dry ice and pure alcohol and place a frying pan or similar on top. The dry ice/alcohol will chill the pan below freezing and then you can drop food onto the pan. Popsical pancakes! I’ve done the dry ice ice cream thing. It works okay, but you get carbonated ice cream, which sounds better than it is. Also you have to make sure you make really fine powder, otherwise you get lumps. I’ve also used grain alcohol and dry ice as the bath for a hand crank ice cream maker, which is much better. Best to put the alcohol in the freezer for a while first, then add the dry ice before putting it in the ice cream maker; it’s so cold that you really want to be cranking when you first add it, and any chunks of dry ice can jam the mechanism. But you get really solid ice cream in like five-ten minutes, which is awesome. I advise leaving it in the bath for a bit to harden, since its much colder than your freezer. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/14 "2013-07-27T17:06:38Z")
the carbonated fruit is cool, best with high water content stuff. ---
**Author:** ![ducati](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/cc9497/32.png) [@ducati](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ducati)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2013, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/15 "2013-07-27T23:22:05Z")
I used to get a few pounds for the kids to play with all the time. In addition to all the normal experiments, they would put a chunk in a big bowl of hot water, and put it in the hallway near the attic fan. The suction of the fan would pull the “smoke” into a long, twisting tornado. Good times. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2013, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/16 "2013-07-29T13:52:08Z")
My idea from years back: Fill a 5-gallon bucket with hot water. Put the bucket in the bed of a pickup truck, along with a full bottle of dishwashing soap, the dry ice, and yourself. Have a friend drive the pickup around. When you’re somewhere appropriate, take the cap off the bottle of soap and dump it all into the hot water, then drop in the dry ice. The bed of the pickup will fill up with bubbles, which will break off in large chunks to waft gaily behind the pickup as you drive. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2013, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fun-with-dry-ice/664641/17 "2013-07-29T14:56:10Z")
Take a flat piece of dry ice, and a quarter. Jam the quarter into the dry ice, maybe 1/3 of the way at most, at a bit of an angle. The quarter will start bouncing up and down rapidly as gas builds up under it and pops it up.