liquid nitrogen

There's an inescapable showmanship inherent in pouring liquid nitrogen into a champagne flute while a cloud of vapor billows from the -321°F fluid and puffs across the bar. But the show isn't the point at Booker & Dax, a brand-new New York cocktail bar in the back of David Chang's much-loved Momofuku Ssäm Bar, where supercold nitrogen, a laboratory centrifuge, and the like are used primarily to make drinks more delicious, and secondarily to create and serve them more efficiently.

When I first saw this photograph of a man’s hand submerged in liquid nitrogen at somewhere below -320° F, my immediate thought was, “That guy must be crazy! One second in that stuff, and you’re shopping for new skin!” My shock was tempered only slightly by the fact that it was my hand, and we’d taken the picture just a minute earlier.

Cryonic technology could help meet the world's peak energy demands as well as cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, a new study says. No, not by freezing excess humans -- by storing excess energy at sub-zero temperatures.

What you consider solid, liquid or gas depends entirely on where you live. For example, men from cold, cold Mars might build their houses out of ice. Women from Venus, where the average temperature is about 870°F, could bathe in liquid zinc.

We think mercury is a liquid metal, but it’s all relative. At one temperature, the mercury atoms arrange themselves into a solid crystal; at another, they flow freely around each other as a liquid. Children from Pluto (like mine, for example) could happily cast their toy soldiers out of mercury, because on that frigid planet it is a solid, malleable metal a lot like tin. Here on temperate Earth, you need a stove to cast tin, but a tank of liquid nitrogen to make mercury figurines.

If you're going to be in New York City next Tuesday, there are still a few tickets left to the Kitchen Alchemy duo's class, "Chilling Out With Liquid Nitrogen."

Did PopSci's recent article on cooking with liquid nitrogen pique your interest? Learn first-hand from H. Alexander Talbot and Aki Kamozawa how to flash-freeze foods and shatter them; turn any cream into ice cream; grind olives into powder; and other kitchen-tech wonders.

The class is at Manhattan's Astor Center, August 26 at 6:30 pm. Use the secret discount code POPSCI when ordering your ticket and get 10 percent off.

Hope to see you there!

In kitchens all around the world, cooks are experimenting with liquid nitrogen. It is a dramatic and very useful culinary tool that can cool or freeze things in an instant. It is made of pure nitrogen in a liquid state. Daniel Rutherford discovered the element nitrogen in 1772. It makes up 78.1% of the earth's atmosphere by volume. In its gaseous state, nitrogen is odorless, colorless, non-flammable, non-toxic, and largely inert. Nitrogen is found in organic materials, foods, explosives, fertilizers, and poisons.

Oxygen is a good thing. Oxygen is life. But if it were much more than one fifth of our air, wed be in serious trouble. The other four fifths is nitrogen, an almost completely inert, obstructionist gas whose main effect is to get in the way of the oxygen, especially where flame is involved. For every bit of oxygen a fire consumes, it has to heat up and push away four times as much useless nitrogen. With pure oxygen, that damper is gone, and things that merely smolder in plain air go up like dry tinder. In 1967 three Apollo 1 astronauts died in a raging fire when Velcro lit up in their pure-oxygen pressurized space capsule.

PopSci's booth at Maker Faire was a crowd favorite (and we're not just saying that)—mainly because the projects displayed by contributors John Carnett and Theo Gray were both ingenious and superfun.

Want to make ice cream in 30 seconds, using liquid nitrogen? No problem.

How about an automatic beer-making, storing, and pouring machine? You can make one.

Video games your thing? Build a beautiful arcade table for your home.

Think watching movies in the backyard would be fun? We do, too! All the projects definitely struck a chord with the Austin audience. Next year we'll bring some scantily clad punk-rock fire dancers and a bike modded out with LED lights, and we'll be a total shoo-in. —Megan Miller

The PopSci booth is hopping here at Maker Faire Austin. Here's Gray Matter columnist Theo Gray doing a version of his "dry ice cream"—this time by simply pouring liquid nitrogen into a pot of cream and sugar. Who needs an ice cream maker? Mmm mmm good.