Another pointless thread for JC, this one is about stuff you’ve done/can do with dry ice. We got some wonderful Omaha Steaks for Christmas, and they came in a well-insulated Styrofoam box with some dry ice to keep everything nice and cold. I had to mess with the dry ice afterward, as it reminded me of my early days of delivering ice cream around the Detroit area in the early 1980s.
There are two clips there. One shows what a chunk of dry ice will do in the kitchen sink. You can also make an “Addams Family cocktail” with an ice cube-sized piece in a glass of water. Whatever you do, don’t drink the ice!
The second clip shows a little more of the “dry ice air hockey” effect. Putting the slab on its side makes it vibrate noisily, I guess because it’s probably a little crooked, and the pressure vs. the release of gas causes it to bounce up and down slightly. This effect works great on formica, polished stone or any other really smooth surface.
DISCLAIMER:
Dry ice is not a toy! Use it at your own risk, and don’t blame me for anything stupid you may end up doing. At a temperature of −56.4 °C (−69.5 °F) it will burn bare skin and can break temperature-sensitive things, like glass. It’s an interesting substance, because the frozen carbon dioxide goes straight from solid to gas form, without any liquid state in between.
And of course, it may well be considerably colder than that, and therefore burn more. 56.4 °C being just the maximum temperature at which is is solid, under normal conditions.
You’re right Naomi. I got that number from Wikipedia, but I remember it being quite a bit colder. From this site I get something much closer to the temperature I remember, -109.3 degrees Fahrenheit (-78.5 degrees C). dryiceinfo.com also used the same numbers. Brrr!
So yeah, wear your oven mitts! Yes, when I handled whole blocks of dry ice back in the day, gloves were essential. Even then, you might have to take a break or add padding for prolonged contact. Brief contact with bare skin is okay, long as it’s brief enough. It has to be pretty brief.
We had some dry ice a while back (cause i was taking a container of icecream up to the top of Mt Ruapehu, dont ask why!) and there was HEAPS left over.
What was fun was to put it in a cup of boiling water and watch it go all misty, or, the more exciting option, is to get a 600ml soft drink bottle, put water and dry ice in it, shake, throw, and run REALLY quick xD
Dangerous but so fun haha. And of course you just use bare hands to hold it! But only for a little while burning yourself is NOT fun.
I would have been concerned for the person who dove in though; since the nitrogen creates an oxygen exclusion zone on the surface of the water, which is where the swimmer is breathing, it would be possible to suffocate if they were breathing rapidly, or were exposed for enough time.
There is a natural phenomenon, created by volcanic activity, in Africa called Mazuku where carbon dioxide pools in low lying areas creating kill zones. These Mazukus kill everything from insects on up. They’re invisible, check wikipedia.
I know of a laboratory (I’m phrasing this neutrally as otherwise it could have repercussions) where people would put some dry ice in a vacuum tube. That’s kind of a thick-walled rubber tube. Then they put hose clamps tightly on each end so the volume was closed of. The contraption was left under someones desk when they were briefly away. Slowly, the dry ice cubes would vaporise and the rubber would swell to balloon-size, but still thick-walled. Eventually, after ten minutes or so, the thing would explode with the loudest BANG !! you can imagine. Surprisingly, no fatalities have ever been recorded.
But it reminded me of 
burning yourself is NOT fun.