Seriously, It was a balmy -39°C last night with the windchill and I giving niffy nunu's boyfriend a ride home when I would have rather been snuggled under the blankets watching NCIS when she calls me on my cellphone asking if "I want to do a really cool science experiment" when I got home.
Who's child wants to do a science at 9:15 at night?
Apparently mine...I am so glad I said yes!
This is what we did.
{make sure to watch the slow motion portion of the video!}
Boiling hot water thrown from a cup into very cold air will almost instantly freeze in midair and create a shower of ice crystals like you see below.
Now how does that happen? I went searching and this is a little of what I had gleaned.
{See cool science stuff below}
FROM BOILING TO FREEZING
A cup of boiling hot water thrown into very cold air (for example, at −37°C, or −35°F, as shown in the photograph) will almost instantly freeze in midair and create a shower of tiny ice crystals. There are several reasons behind this phenomenon. First, the near-boiling water is already close to becoming steam when it is thrown into the air, which means that the water molecules are much closer to evaporating into the vapor state than they would be if the water were cold.
Second, the act of throwing the water into the air causes it to break up into tiny droplets. The water that was contained in the cup (which originally had a relatively small surface exposed to the air) now experiences a tremendous increase in the total surface area exposed to the air. This situation helps to speed up the evaporation process (evaporation is the process of turning from a liquid to a vapor).
Finally, very cold air typically has a low humidity level (that is, a low amount of water vapor present). This is yet another factor aiding the transition from liquid water, to water vapor, to ice crystals. At sufficiently low temperatures, this process seems to occur almost instantaneously.
Read more: Fresh Water, Physics and Chemistry of - sea, depth, oceans, temperature, important, salt, system, effect, oxygen, human http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/En-Ge/Fresh-Water-Physics-and-Chemistry-of.html#b#ixzz1jp2Z2XUK
Guess there are fun things to do when you live in the frozen north!
Just make sure to watch where your throwing that pot of boiling water.
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