Friday, February 07, 2014

Dispatches from the Dirt Lab, 3rd Edition


It's been cold around here. Very cold. Cold enough that boiling hot water seems to instantly vanish into clouds of steam when thrown into the air. So I did. Just to be clear - do not throw large volumes of boiling water directly into the air over your head. The risk of scalding is real. I used heavy welding gloves to protect my hands and used a squirt bottle to turn the water into small droplets so that any water that would have landed on me would be a small, rapidly cooling droplet. I also aimed the stream of water away from my body.

Dispatches from the Dirt Lab #3: Tea Time and the Polar Vortex from Matt Kuchta on Vimeo.
Where I demonstrate what happens when really hot water meets really cold air.

Although it was only about -14°F (about -26 C), the effect is pretty obvious. Huge billowing clouds of steam. In slow motion it looks pretty freakin' awesome.

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