Re: things to do with dry ice?

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Thu, 16 Sep 1999, Stefan Jeglinski wrote:

> Well, &*#^%$ Floyd was a complete bust for us, after the preview
> looked dire indeed. Based on my experience with Fran 3 years ago, I
> had procured 2 50-pound blocks of dry ice. Now they are just sitting
> in a cooler.
>
> Any good ideas for fun, educational or otherwise???
>
> (tired of making soda-bottle CO2 bombs)


Dry ice in alcohol makes a good "cryo-fluid" for freezing objects.  Works
almost as good as LN2, and is about as dangerous.   Make lead chimes,
freeze an operating LED and watch it get fantastically bright, etc.


Put tiny chips of dry ice in a shallow pan of warm water.  They spin and
make "galaxies" and "comet nucleii"


If you have a high-voltage DC supply or a VDG machine, try creating the
weird "invisible threads" shown here:
http://www.amasci.com/weird/unusual/airthred.html


Fill balloons with CO2 and use them as sound lenses (sound telescopes)


I heard that if you put dry ice powder in heavy surgical tubing and clamp
the ends shut, it liquifies and warms up to room temperature eventually.
(It might explode when the brittle rubber is still frozen though, so take
precautions.)


Put cakes of dry ice in an empty aquarium in a draft-free room, then blow
soap bubbles so that they fall into the aquarium.  They hover, and if they
don't pop, they will freeze.  Better yet, get some cardboard (or
plexiglas" and make a huge box.  (Need to seal it well so no gas-jets
develop which leak the CO2 pool away.


Hand out some 2L pop bottles to kids, 1/2 full of warm water, then drop a
few large dry ice chips into each.  They make fog-columns like a silent
volcano. I tried this at a birthday party, and kept a sharp eye out, but
nobody found any ways to abuse them.  (This was 6 yr old kids, with
several parents, and I warned them not to try to get to the dry-ice chip
because it can cause frostbite.)  (Keep the bottle caps far away.  Better
yet, cut a small slit in each bottle somewhere near the top, as a pressure
relief port.)



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