Chemist Muhammad Qureshi took the wildly popular ALS ice bucket challenge to a new level in a YouTube video published Saturday, dumping a bucket of liquid nitrogen over his head instead of ice water.
“So a lot of you are saying that since this is very dangerous, won’t I freeze, won’t I get frostbite?” Qureshi said in the video, filmed at the University of Toronto. “Well, thankfully, there’s something called the leidenfrost effect, which will save me.”
The Leidenfrost effect occurs when a liquid comes into contact with a surface that is at a temperature much greater than its boiling point, and it causes the liquid to vaporize at such a rate that it forms a layer of insulating vapor between it and the surface. This means that a cryogenic liquid (or any light porous material soaked with it) will lift itself up from the floor and start to hover. [Emphasis added]
Qureshi warned that the experiment was extremely dangerous, and not to be tried at home.
Muhammad Qureshi dumps a bucket of liquid nitrogen over his head for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. (Image: YouTube)
Muhammad Qureshi dumps a bucket of liquid nitrogen over his head for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. (Image: YouTube)
Muhammad Qureshi dumps a bucket of liquid nitrogen over his head for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. (Image: YouTube)
Muhammad Qureshi dumps a bucket of liquid nitrogen over his head for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. (Image: YouTube)
“I gotta be honest,” Qureshi said at the end of the video. “This is much, much colder than ice water. But nonetheless, that was really cool.”
You can watch the complete video, below:
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