2/21/06: Having moved to a place where I have neighbors less than a quarter mile away and that the police can actually find, it may take a while before I can resume playing with dry ice again.
What's more fascinating yet still easily available than dry ice? Among it's many useful properties, it carbonates (and cools) lemonade, makes fog, liquefies at 5 bars and 200 Kelvin, and explodes in your freezer at 2 AM.
Yes, it has done all of these things for me. However, the most interesting thing was my temporary success at liquefying it. Packing it into small gatorade bottles and tightening the caps to the point that my fingers turned red held just enough pressure to create it's fascinating molten form. At the time, I never thought to take any pictures. It's just like water, only it's supercold, violently boils when you hold the bottle due to heat from your hand, and explosively flashes into dry ice foam when decompressed.
So I figured I'd store the bottles in the freezer and keep liquid dry ice. WRONG. The night of my triuphant experiment, I heard a loud bang and crashing sounds downstairs. I (3/4 asleep at 2:30 AM) waddled downstairs and found the freezer door swung all the way open, half it's contents on the floor, and every single fridge magnet launched halfway across the room. Oh, yes. If only I had caught that bang on film.
Finally, after a long hiatus, I've aquired more dry ice and made dry ice bombs with it! Even better, I recorded them with a camcorder. I'll try and put up one or 2 videos some time. In the mean time, I've got frame captures and recommendations:
The 3-liter bottle didn't have enough dry ice in it and was sitting there like a balloon. So I made a little one to set the big one off. This is the first frame that shows evidence of the explosion: Look very carefully at the frame interlaced above the green bottle. It has begun! |
Kerplowie! Amazingly, the large bottle survives - for the next 15th of a second. The camera was set at it's fastest shutter speed, 1/500 second. I can't wait until I can save enough money to buy a Redlake high-speed camera... |
The green bottle is gone and flying away at warp speed, but what about the bottle it's supposed to set off? |
Never mind. |
Novel idea: detonate compression bomb inside liquid medium and watch liquid medium destroy it's container!
Looks serene and calm. If only that bottle wasn't about to explode.
 One 60th of a second later: Kaboom! Note that one interleave has a shadow of where things were before. That blue smear was the labelling on the bottle. Poor old Mr. Folgers. He never stood a chance... |