🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 19 Jan 1996, Joe Ragosta wrote:

> That's a strange statement. I've worked with hundreds of liters of liquid
> N2 and never had a problem. Liquid nitrogen is very inert and hardly
> reacts with anything. It won't explode under any circumstances I know of

Er...this is WAY off topic but just to clarify, putting some liq nitrogen 
into a microfuge tube and closing the lid is much like placing a chip of 
dry ice into such a tube and closing the lid...both will explode as 
enough of the material, whether "ice" or liquid melts into gas and the 
pressure builds...POP!

The difference is that the dry ice generally just loudly blows the lid 
off the tube after a handful of seconds while the liq nitrogen almost 
doesn't allow enough time to release the tube and when it blows, it turns 
the plastic microfuge tube into fragments.  Dry ice in a microfuge tube 
is occasionally used as a joke...seal in a chip of ice, close the lid and 
toss the tube next to your target individual.  POP!  The person is 
startled and jumps.  The liquid nitrogen is louder and not really useful 
for this silly practical joke due to the speed with which it 
blows...though the one time I did it, it not only startled me, but 
everyone else in the lab...it was respectably loud.

I wasn't talking some militia nutcase terrorism here, just a simple 
little bit of play or a joke.

poneil@genetics.utah.edu