dumb. and i like him.

mrph

Just when you thought the green-lights couldn't get any worse...

Maybe in part two, he'll put it in some punch!

Can't wait.

No, worse would be ANYTHING with Emiril in it

wha...

I like Alton and all but putting liquid nitrogen in my mouth does not sound like a good idea.

/guess it's ok tho

that was cool, did you see in the background the labrador was trying to hump the little girl.

OMG111 He's the devil!!!!!

So I guess that island thread sank back into the sea?

wtf is he trying to say smoking is ok to a bunch of kids?

worst youtube link ever.

and I love alton brown

I'm going out on a limb and saying that's not liquid nitrogen. I'm pretty sure he's playing with dry ice there (frozen CO2).

My boyfriend hates "Good Eats". I guess I can't blame him.

Yeah, liquid nitrogen doesn't sublime, it boils. It's dry ice.

/interned at a lab this past summer
//used lots of liquid nitrogen for drying in vacuo
///CO2/acetone baths were also commonplace

someone call me?

I've seen this before.
They take graham crackers and dip them in liquid nitrogen.
The crackers have a property that they remain cold, but they do not transmit the cold to your mouth very well (thus they are reasonably safe to eat). The trick is you just leave it it your mouth and as you exhale, the water vapor freezes as it passes the graham cracker bits that you've chewed up.
If you poured liquid nitrogen in your mouth you'd probably lose your tongue, cheeks, and most of your teeth. It would not be pretty.

It's graham crackers frozen in liquid nitrogen. Notice how he says it's "boiling". Then you can see him chewing up the graham cracker and eating it after it's cooled off. And he screwed up, liquid nitrogen does not sublime. Sublimation is when something goes from solid directly to gas. And he also says no heat is involved, wrong again, of course there is heat involved. It wouldn't be boiling if it wasn't taking in heat from it's surroundings.

OregonVet

I'm going out on a limb and saying that's not liquid nitrogen. I'm pretty sure he's playing with dry ice there (frozen CO2).

I had a professor in college put liquid nitrogen (not dry ice, mind you, but N2) in his mouth. He had it in a styrofoam coffee cup, then took a small sip and immediately spit it out. It made a white cloud probably two feet in diameter.

He used to do crazy stuff from time to time. He brought in a bed of nails to demonstrate that pressure equals force divided by area. The lecture hall had a floor that was pretty small, and then about 15 very steep rows of seats, so that the hall was taller than it was wide: he went to the top row with a bowling ball that was suspended from a cable; he brought the ball right against his nose and let it go, and when it swung back it didn't hit him. He demonstrated Newtonian mechanics with a fire-extinguisher-type CO2 tank and a pair of roller skates. He showed us the structure of the Milky Way with "The Galaxy Song" from "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life" (though he did have to obscure some naughty bits). One cool thing he did was demonstrate conservation of angular momentum by spinning on a swivel chair holding a spinning bicycle tire horizontally by the axle; he turned the tire over and the chair reversed direction, and when he held the tire vertically the chair stopped spinning.

Mind you none of this other than Eric Idle had anything to do with anything (it was an elective astronomy class), but he would do one of these things every couple of weeks. My roommate was taking the same class but a different section with a serious respected astrophysicist, and I think he got much less out of the class.

2006-11-12 11:56:40 PM TehFuzz
Yeah, liquid nitrogen doesn't sublime, it boils. It's dry ice.

Liquid nitrogen is not dry ice. You interned at a lab. Did they fire you? And yes, dry ice sublimes.

I would go gay for Alton Brown. I love that man.

His turkey frying episode on Food Network tonight was great. The red siren on top of the ladder was such bling.

Greenlit?????

liquid nitrogen?

Thanksgiving?

olshanski
"If you poured liquid nitrogen in your mouth you'd probably lose your tongue, cheeks, and most of your teeth. It would not be pretty."

Try again. You can perfectly well pour a reasonable portion of LN2 into your mouth. I don't know why you would want to really spitting it out and making the smoke cloud is only fun the first time. However, swallowing LN2 is a bad idea. A small small volume and you can make a very loud burp. Too much, and you may run into a situation where you have suddenly pressurized your stomach to an alarming degree. I am not aware of any confirmed injuries from this, but I would rather be safe.

You can even pour LN2 all over your arm/hand. A protective cushion of N2 gas forms, and the LN2 runs off without ever really chilling your flesh to anything approaching a dangerous degree. HOWEVER, you must let the LN2 run off. A cupped hand would be a very painful lesson to learn.

Another vote for either him screwing up (It's really LN2 and he meant that it was boiling) or it was really CO2 and Smitty screwed up (which means that it really was subliming)

You can hold either in your mouth, but preferentially, I'd rather hold LN2 (liquid nitrogen). It boils so fast that it floats on a cushion of N2 in your hand, mouth, whatever. Like a firecracker, it only really hurts if you squeeze it (e.g. swallow, which will kill you most likely) or get completely submerged in it (a la the famous hot-dog-in-the-glove trick) (ask me later...)

/LN2 makes better ice cream

You can perfectly well pour a reasonable portion of LN2 into your mouth.

Screw all that, I had Liquid Nitrogen applied to my fingertips by a doctor. It's the most excruciating pain I've ever endured.

Apparently the scientists are out in force. I've held it cupped in my hand, no damage there. It's submerging it which does damage.

/Beaten at the last second
//Still no reason flecks of it hurt when they hit you

It is possible to have very small amounts of liquid nitrogen in your mouth and not suffer any ill effects. What happens is the nitrogen is so cold, it boils before it touches the surfaces in your mouth, creating a protective layer of nitrogen gas. This is still extremely dangerous due to the risk of swallowing minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit liquid. Do NOT try this it home. Or at your friend's place. Or at work. Or anywhere, for that matter. A much safer demonstration of this property is to hold your hand loosely, palm down, fingers pointing down, and then have someone slowly pour liquid nitrogen over the back of your hand. It just rolls off. If you are over a tile floor, the liquid nitrogen will bead up and scuttle around on a thin layer of nitrogen gas.

SharkUW: Liquid nitrogen is not dry ice. You interned at a lab. Did they fire you? And yes, dry ice sublimes.

I think "it" referred to what Alton was playing with, not liquid nitrogen. That sort of pronoun ambiguity is the product of a science guy, so I'm willing to believe him.

/but don't let me stop you from being a dick

I don't think I'd take advice on handling hazardous materials like liquid nitrogen from a group of Farkers.

No offense to those who have experience and know what you're talking about, but it's hard to tell the the armchair scientists from the real deal, with everyone telling everyone else they are wrong. I'd get advice from a pro in person before I ever tried screwing with something like LN2.

Now most advice I could take from Farkers with confidence. On things that could possibly maim/kill me?...not so much.

Alton is da bomb... but...


Nigella rules, for obvious reasons.

I absolutely love Alton, and all his shows, and books, but this was just lame.

Alton rocks.

I did read of one guy who did the Ln2 trick in the mouth where it ended badly. He took a decent portion instead of a small sip and at the end after blowing smoke rings for a few seconds he swolled the remaining table spoon left over in his mouth instead of spitting it out. According to the guy he didnt remember anything after that but "awoke" in the hospital a couple weeks later to find out what happend.

Turns out that his esophagas clamped shut after expelling some gas which allowed the pressure to build up enough to painfully caused him to pass out. He had some "burns" in his stomache from the freezing and some minor rupturing. I am pretty sure the constant flow of Nitrogene over his lungs wasnt doing him a hellova lot of good either. But hey asside from a minor coma he lived.

So fellas remember, sometimes its better to spit than to swallow.

/tip from yer uncle Earl.

Cosmic Jester: It is possible to have very small amounts of liquid nitrogen in your mouth and not suffer any ill effects. What happens is the nitrogen is so cold, it boils before it touches the surfaces in your mouth, creating a protective layer of nitrogen gas.

Absolutely correct. It's called the Leidenfrost Effect. There is a great article about it called BOILING AND THE LEIDENFROST EFFECT by Jearl Walker (goes straight to PDF). It starts off kind of dry, but livens up around about the point where he sticks his hand into molten lead.

He did the trick with liquid nitrogen (LN2) in his mouth, until the time it shattered one of his teeth.

In the video, I doubt Alton Brown is not sticking LN2 in his mouth. The way he is holding his head would make it too easy to swallow, and one teaspoon of LN2 would become 3 litres (over 6 US pints) of nitrogen gas in his stomach.

Why does FARK love this guy? What has he done that is so worthy of praise?

/DWTFV
/he's a tool

orclover's story was published in the first Darwin Awards book.

Reproduced here
http://www.darwinawards.com/personal/personal2000-25.html

or on PubMed

Pediatrics. 2000 Jan;105(1 Pt 1):121-3.
Gastric perforation attributable to liquid nitrogen ingestion.

Not the same case, but similar enough.
The story is close enough to what would really happen according to the article.

/Bleh

Major Shake: I've held it cupped in my hand, no damage there. It's submerging it which does damage.

I've dipped my hand into a bucket of liquid nitrogen. I felt a bit of pressure on my hand but it wasn't cold.

This was when I was a kid, at the Ontario Science Centre (back in the days of lawn darts and chemistry sets). I'm pretty sure they're not still doing that part of the demo.

JediKangaroo [TotalFark]

Absolutely correct. It's called the Leidenfrost Effect. There is a great article about it called BOILING AND THE LEIDENFROST EFFECT by Jearl Walker. It starts off kind of dry, but livens up around about the point where he sticks his hand into molten lead.

Then goes right off the deep end when he warns that spatters of the lead can cause severe burns and scarring and despite knowing this he did it multiple times, scarring his face and arms. You'd think that one such scar would have been enough of a lesson for most people.

I am guessing that he takes a small piece of Dry Ice and puts it between his teeth. Dry ice would be much safer than N2 (despite the cushion effect) because it is at a much higher temperature (-110 C compared to -190 C).

Why was he playing with a low temperature liquid/gas (whatever you think it was)? Was he doing anything other than telling people lies about physics?

If he had made ice cream with LN2 I would have been more impressed. Hell, maybe I will make ice cream with LOX and tell people it will help them burn more calories.

I love AB, but I gotta agree, that was lame.

I work for liquid nitrogen and am really getting a kick out of most of these replies....

AB for President.

Heston approves!!!

MektonZ: Then goes right off the deep end when he warns that spatters of the lead can cause severe burns and scarring and despite knowing this he did it multiple times, scarring his face and arms. You'd think that one such scar would have been enough of a lesson for most people.

Aforementioned burns and scars haven't dissuaded me from soldering various things over the years....

Did you know you had to be 18 do buy dry ice? I didn't.

But it's cool that you can carry it home in a paper bag.

Alton rocks, but this wasn't his finest.

"Why does FARK love this guy? What has he done that is so worthy of praise"

Same question for you, troll.

SharkUW : Please go back to school and take English again. I'm thinking you are the only one who couldn't understand what was being said.



Anyway...You can see this guy live? I want to see the Alton Brown World Tour heh.

Farkers like Alton Brown because he's a science nerd. I like him because I like to cook, and I enjoy understanding the physics behind cooking. It helps me to be a better cook if I know the science behind the recipe.

"Good Eats" is a little cheesy, sure, but it's the single best food-related show ever, IMHO. Well...that and "The Galloping Gourmet" (pre-heart attack Graham Kerr).

what no Rachel Ray shot?

I saw him live in Nashville, in August, doing what amounted to last night's turkey episode live on stage. 'twas good. And the turkey was right tasty.
/In-laws think I'm gay for him
//so does their daughter