What would happen if you dipped an ice cube into a vat of liquid nitrogen? Would science happen?
Nothing amazing - assuming the ice cube is relatively warm (28F or so), it will still be significantly hotter than the nitrogen, and so the nitrogen will boil much like it would if you put anything else in it. Eventually the ice cube will cool to the temperature of the nitrogen, and it will stop boiling. You’ll then have a very cold ice cube.
If you let go of the ice cube, it would sink to the bottom - ice is less dense than liquid nitrogen.
The crystal structure of the ice might change to a less-common form, but I don’t think you’d notice any qualitative difference.
Depends on the temperature of the ice cube. Above the boiling point of the Nitrogen, then the Nitrogen boils away until the ice is reduced to that temp. Below the boiling point, but above the freezing point - not much happens (visibly anyway). Below the freezing point of Nitrogen, some Nitrogen would freeze to the cube.
Nothing counter-intuitive happens.
This could be the premise of a BBC “look around you” program…
Yes, Science would happen.
Is that what you meant to say? I know ice does counter-intuitive things in water because of their relative densities, but sinking to the bottom suggests to me that ice would be denser than liquid nitrogen.
Oops. Yes, I misspoke. Ice would sink to the bottom because it’s denser.
Most ice has lots of dissolved gases in it. Also, chances are the ice is not a single crystal and has lots of defects. I would expect that in liquid nitrogen the ice would crack. That is unless it is extremely uniform and clean ice. Of course having done this on several occasions might give me a little bit of an edge in predicting the outcome.
Unlikely, unless you’re also applying pressure. The only other form of ice that’s stable at standard pressure is ice-XI, and I think the transition temperature is about 5 Kelvin colder than the boiling point of nitrogen (72 K vs. 77 K.)
Hmmmmm… do ya think that the ice would turn intoIce Nine?
Science would really happen then!
Scientific Progress Goes Plink…
I’d like to see the ants make an igloo out of that
Per Wiki, ice-XI forms at -36C, but the transformation process is very slow. This site says that it can be prepared relatively quickly from dilute KOH at the temperature you say.
What would happen if you then dropped a few of these supercooled ice cubes into a room-temperature beverage? Would the beverage quickly freeze solid?
Actually, I think it goes “Boink”
Unlikely. Without running any calculations, I would say that the heat energy required to heat up an ice cube to from the temperature of liquid nitrogen to the freezing point of water is much less than the energy required to effect the phase change from solid ice to liquid water (i.e. melt the ice cube).
Runnning the numbers, to raise the temperature of a 100 gram ice cube from 77 K to 273 K would require about 19.6 kJ of heat.
Melting a 100 gram ice cube would require about 33.4 kJ of heat.
So, putting an extremely cold ice cube (at 77 K) into your beverage would be like having a 70% bigger ice cube (at 273 K).