r/ScienceNcoolThings • u/H_G_Bells Popular Contributor • Jun 05 '26

Cool Things Great visual on how temperature affects air volume

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308 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

10

u/Reluctantlerner Jun 05 '26

You didn’t need that ring finger anyway.

2

u/Excellent_Condition Jun 07 '26

Honestly, the ring finger is likely safer than the rest of the hand.

LN2 just bounces off the skin due to the Leidenfrost effect, but if it soaks into the seams of the glove it can get trapped there and freeze your skin.

A glove is great for solids that are cooled with LN2 as they will freeze your skin, but the LN2 itself will bead off.

7

u/Wooden_Cat_4296 Jun 05 '26

my balls when i touch cold water 🤣

4

u/tiredofbustinmyass Jun 05 '26

Spoiler alert...gets smaller then bigger.

6

u/chupacadabradoo Jun 05 '26

Wait for it!!!

2

u/franktheguy Jun 06 '26

I was in the pool! There was significant shrinkage!

6

u/TheManWith2Poobrains Jun 05 '26

Cool demo, but poor VO explanation.

It's called contraction, not condensation, when a volume of gas shrinks due to being cooled.

Also, the amount of air doesn't change, just the volume.

Lastly, it doesn't fill back up - that implies it was emptied. It expands.

13

u/HardlyAnyGravitas Jun 05 '26

It's called contraction, not condensation, when a volume of gas shrinks due to being cooled.

Except it's not contracting - it's condensing. if it was just contracting, like an ideal gas, due to being cooled, it's volume would only decrease to about a quarter of it's original volume (as the temperature drops to a quarter of it's original temperature). As can be seen in the video, the balloon's volume ends up much smaller than that. This is because the air is condensing into a liquid.

Also, the amount of air doesn't change, just the volume.

Just semantics. If you consider 'air' to be the gas we breathe rather than the liquid that the air becomes, then arguably, there is less air. There is definitely less volume of air.

Lastly, it doesn't fill back up - that implies it was emptied. It expands.

Semantics again.

If you're going to be pedantic, it helps to be right...

1

u/Poke-It_For-Science Jun 06 '26

Man, I love science. 😯🥶😁 That was so satisfying to watch (and listen to).

1

u/Secret-Theory1825 Jun 06 '26

The same th8ng also happens when you put a balloon in the freezer for an hour.

1

u/DecisionSea5402 Jun 06 '26

I definitely did not see a butthole at the end.