Surprise! 10lbs of dry ice. What kind of fun can we have?

January 21, 2016 10:27 AM

So we just got a surprise shipment that contained about ten pounds of dry ice. I know there's all sorts of fun that can be had, but I'm unclear on the extents of said fun. Something science-y, or just cool looking, or...?

We've got it in a styrofoam chest (the shipping vessel) sitting out on the porch currently and understand to keep in mind the offgassing, not to store it in the freezer, not to seal the container airtight, not to touch it with bare skin, etc. Safety first! Got it.

Whatever we end up doing with it, it'll be happening tomorrow evening so we're inherently limited by "how much remains after spending 30ish hours in a inch-thick styrofoam box in 30-40ish degree weather".

So what's the fun Mister Wizard stuff we can do? I'm all for just dumping it in a bucket of water or something, but that seems like an easy out. Think MAJESTIC or WHOA I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WOULD HAPPEN. This isn't FOR kids, but for the purposes of science-y amazement we're all basically ten years old inside.

posted by radiosilents to Science & Nature (20 answers total)

http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/january-2015/how-to-build-your-own-particle-detector
posted by bdc34 at 10:31 AM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

I always just pour hot water into the styrofoam container for a sweet smoke effect. You could also use it to super-cool acetone, which would give you a sort of CO/acetone slush that you can use for sciency tricks like shrinking balloons, shattering leaves of lettuce, etc.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:32 AM on January 21, 2016

One thing actually useful I saw on YouTube once was to try and remove dents from a car. Small dents where the sheet metal has not creased. It worked in the video, but I saw something else say it was bs because they tried it and it did not work. Not a very sexy or cool thing, but it might help in a practical sort of way.
posted by AugustWest at 10:32 AM on January 21, 2016

Where does slipping little chips of dry ice into people's coffee fall on the safety scale? Because it is hilarious.

If you put it in soapy water you get a crazy bubbling smoky spectacle, always an inner child pleaser.

It's also pretty easy to turn Gatorade or soda bottles into rockets by adding some water and dry ice. Just be careful, they have a tendency to fly sideways, or at the most breakable thing nearby.
posted by Wretch729 at 10:42 AM on January 21, 2016

Putting some in a sealed plastic container until the pressure makes it explode is excellent dumb "10 year old in a grownup's body" fun. Stand well back after it's sealed; in grad school we'd do this with little 1mL plastic vials and they make a fun "pop"; for a larger volume it's more dangerous up close.

Pour some out of the container to douse a flame?

Take rubbery things around the house, pop them in there for a few minutes, and watch them be all brittle and hard.

If there aren't any safety or flavor concerns as far as whatever was shipped with it, make some punch and put some pieces in.
posted by tchemgrrl at 10:51 AM on January 21, 2016

Oh! one thing not to do is to put any down your drain. They can make PVC pipes brittle enough to break.
posted by tchemgrrl at 10:52 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

This shows you how to build a dry ice hoverboard.
posted by H21 at 10:54 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Carbonate some fruit! There are a lot of different methods on the internet. You could even just go stick some fruit in there right now.
posted by spelunkingplato at 10:55 AM on January 21, 2016 [5 favorites]

A dry ice bomb is definitely one of the cooler things I've done in college. At our physics fair we put ice in a bottle, capped it, and then placed that bottle in a large trash can half full of water (like a 55gal can). BOOM!

For extra credit, tie a cinder block to the bottle and throw it in a swimming pool. Depth charge!
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 10:59 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Floating soap bubbles! "Investigate the principles of buoyancy and semipermeability". Go to Exploratorium.edu and search for bubble suspension.
posted by LiverOdor at 12:08 PM on January 21, 2016

My stupid trick with dry ice is to put some in my mouth and blow smoke out of my nose when people aren't expecting it. The important thing to remember is to make sure you have some water in your mouth. The water increases the sublimation rate creating a protective bubble of the gaseous CO2 around the dry ice making sure your mouth doesn't get frostbite.
posted by koolkat at 12:20 PM on January 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

We always dump it in the dish soap water at work, with extra soap. :)
We sorta like bubbles..
posted by stormyteal at 1:07 PM on January 21, 2016

About six feet of PVC, including two elbow bends, to make a pipe resembling a shepherd's crook; a glycerin and soap mixture; a styrofoam or otherwise moderately confined chest which you can place a PVC-sized hole in.

Seal the chest so that the exhaust comes out the pipe, pointing down. Dip the end of the pipe in the glycerin and soap mixture. Watch as smoke-filled bubbles bob along the floor and then pop. Delight.
posted by klangklangston at 1:31 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Science projects aside: I used to work as a courier on a medical research center campus. We'd frequently receive shipments packed in dry ice. I and my colleagues in the shipping dock would usually take turns quick-freezing lunch items (in their packaging, of course). Fruit-flavored yogurt was the best. Just set the container on the ice for a minute, and hey presto, frozen yogurt.
posted by duffell at 1:49 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I did this for a bunch of 7th-graders once. They were impressed.

Make your own comet!

It contains dirt, ammonia, and organic material (I used molasses), and those make it less fun for the person making a comet, even if they make it more educational. Strike a balance. I used rubber gloves inside garden gloves for the hand-mixing bit. The result is a sticky, stinky, hole-filled ball of water-ice that oozes smoke. Great fun. It's safe to touch briefly, it's got spectacle for several senses, and it's fast and cheap.
posted by Sunburnt at 2:40 PM on January 21, 2016

Can you lay your hands on 1500 ping pong balls by tomorrow?!
posted by penguin pie at 3:07 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

If you make dry ice bombs with soda bottles,
1) do it outdoors, away from people who could get hurt
2) have goggles and a hockey stick (or similar) available to whack any duds with before you try to defuse them
3) have a cover story available for the campus police as to why you're wearing goggles and smacking things with a hockey stick in the beach volleyball court in the middle of the night
4) use 2 liter bottles, not 20 oz bottles
5) use cold-to-room temp water, NOT HOT

Pay especial attention to (4) and (5), otherwise you risk a surprisingly sturdy bottle exploding with surprising force in your fist before you can throw it.

In all seriousness, when this happened to me, it took me a full minute to realize that I had not actually blown my hand *off*, because I couldn't feel anything. And it injured my hand badly enough that I had to get a medical exemption to get extra time and scheduled breaks during my finals, because I could barely hold a pencil for some time afterwards.

(This was years ago and the hand recovered uneventfully after a couple of weeks. Still. Don't let one go off in your hand.)
posted by telepanda at 3:38 PM on January 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh. And if you are a college professor and decide to (in front of your packed lecture hall) set off a dry ice bomb under an inverted trash can, be sure to make it low power enough that you don't inadvertently create a trash-can-sized circular hole in the ceiling, with a sprinkler head dangling awkwardly out of it by a single wire.
posted by telepanda at 3:42 PM on January 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

Seeing cosmic rays is always good fun. And if you make a cloud chamber, pull an element out of an old smoke alarm, they've got (a very tiny bit of) Americium in them which is an alpha source, and watch the tracks the particles make.
posted by Ned G at 9:46 AM on January 22, 2016

You really can use dry ice to remove little pings and dents from a car! I've done it multiple times. It only works on very small indentations, though, and you MUST make sure you wrap the lump of dry ice in a cloth first.
posted by Dr. Wu at 12:40 PM on January 22, 2016