Making SOLID Nitrogen!

2m read

·Nov 10, 2024

Boiling point is something that we normally think of as a stable property of a substance. But it really depends on what the pressure is around the substance. So, for example, water only boils at 100 degrees Celsius if the pressure is 1 atmosphere.

So if you reduce the pressure, then those water molecules that are going quite quickly can easily escape from the water if there's no pressure pushing down on them. So you can get water to boil at room temperature. This is really boiling water. The funny thing about boiling water at room temperature is that it actually decreases the temperature of the water.

That's because all the fastest water molecules escape, leaving only the slow ones behind. We are refrigerating the water. Refrigerating the water by boiling it. Yes, yes (Laughing) That is a cool concept.

I know everyone's a big fan of liquid nitrogen, but I've never seen solid nitrogen. So we used the same trick, pumping out the very fastest nitrogen molecules. And eventually, that decreased the temperature enough that the nitrogen actually froze. (Laughing)

I'm putting a thermocouple in there so we can measure the temperature of our liquid nitrogen. And it reads... Okay, so the temperature of our liquid nitrogen is about minus 196 Celsius. Which is exactly what it should be.

And now we're going to evacuate the chamber. We're gonna suck the air out of there. You can see that the nitrogen is boiling. The temperature's dropping, minus 199, minus 200... We're coming up on the triple point of nitrogen.

I don't know. We're forming solid nitrogen. The ice is actually getting sucked up by the reduced pressure up here, and there is a higher pressure underneath the ice because the vacuum pump hasn't had a chance to work there. I've never seen solid nitrogen before.

After creating the solid nitrogen, we poured it onto a water bath. And we got the whole surface so cold that carbon dioxide actually condensed out of the atmosphere, and we formed solid carbon dioxide, dry ice, on the surface of the water. We have a solid piece of CO2.

Resources and population growth | Interactions in ecosystems | Middle school biology | Khan Academy

The Man Who Killed Millions and Saved Billions (Clean Version)

View All

Constant-volume calorimetry | Thermodynamics | AP Chemistry | Khan Academy

Calorimetry refers to the measurement of heat flow, and there are many different types of calorimeters. In this case, we’re looking at a constant volume calorimeter, which is also called a bomb calorimeter. Let’s look at how a bomb calorimeter works. Fir…

$1000 per month from DIVIDEND stocks? (Passive income from investing)

1,000 of dividend income per month? That sounds like the absolute dream! How nice would that be? Every month, just for being an investor in a couple of companies, you’re getting paid a thousand dollars. You didn’t even have to do anything for that money. …

15 Things To Do When Life Doesn’t Go Your Way

In the novel of Our Lives, plot twists are essential to the richness of the story. They’re here to make your Ted Talk more interesting. Maybe you got fired, lost someone, or your flight got delayed, missed your connection, and now you’re writing a script …

Back to Camp | Life Below Zero

Sue Aikens has spent the past four months in Fairbanks recovering from surgery. As Kavik River Camp’s sole proprietor, her absence has left this site uninhabited and unprotected. “I have to visually check everything, behind any corner, any trailer. It’s …

Categorical grants, mandates, and the Commerce Clause | US government and civics | Khan Academy

In a previous video, we’ve introduced ourselves to the idea of federalism in the United States. At a high level, you could view it as a contract between a national government and the states of which it is made. But you could also view it as a layered form…

Worked example: Identifying an element from its mass spectrum | AP Chemistry | Khan Academy

So let’s say that we have some mystery substance here, and we know that it’s a pure element. We need to figure out what it is. Well, scientists have a method, and we go into the details or more details in other videos called mass. Sometimes it’s known as …

Making SOLID Nitrogen!

More Articles