Is It Possible To Melt Dry Ice?

[WouterVerbruggen]

Fun fact, the exact same thing as you describe with sublimating water ice in your freezer also happens with CO2, which will result in it cooling down. That piece you were holding will cool down to almost 20 degrees lower than the -78.5 C number that is usually called directly from the phase diagram. I did my MSc thesis on this exact phenomenon and we published it last month. I would put the DOI link here, but YouTube blocks it... The title is "Experimental and theoretical investigation of the dry ice sublimation temperature for varying far-field pressure and CO2 concentration" and avaible open acces.

[Himmelsfeger]

Nice video. One question: Could you edit out or make the sound of the blowing air less loud in the future? It was uncomfortable to hear the noise for so long.

[David_Miller-Youtube]

When I was young, my grandpa bought a large amount of dry ice. He took me out to the back of our house and filled a bottle of water halfway before adding some pellets of dry ice. He threw it, and in a matter of seconds, it exploded. We continued this thrilling activity for a while until we ran out of water bottles.

[DANGJOS]

I've liquified dry ice a number of times before. One interesting thing I noticed is that, just like water ice, the unmelted dry ice can actually keep the rest of the liquid carbon dioxide at it's melting point temperature, which prevents the pressure from increasing further (although I'd still vent it a few times just in case).

However, the danger is when the dry ice drops before the liquid level. I remember reading that liquid carbon dioxide has a thermal conductivity around a quarter that of water (IIRC).

So if there's only a little dry ice at the bottom of the liquid, you can't rely on it to keep the rest of the liquid cool. And the pressure is controlled by the temperature of the *surface* of the liquid, not the entire thing. So venting would be even more important at that point, to keep the pressure from rising too high. This was all my attempt to completely melt the dry ice so I could refreeze it again in the leftover dry ice I had.

[BlackWolf-]

The 1st time I saw liquid CO2 was in a plastic bottle on Grant Thompson's channel. He expected the dry ice to burst the bottle but not before seeing a puddle of liquid in-between the pellets of frozen sublimating and melting CO2.

[kowhaifan]

That air blowing sound felt relly nice thru my headphone thanks.

[paulcooper]

Cool demonstration.
Snow will sublimate when ground and air temps are below freezing, the shrinking snowman effect.

[ryan]

Reminds me about the time I definitely didn’t make a bunch of dry ice bombs as a teen. 😅

[xpndblhero]

There was a company that made dry ice right in my little neighborhood and I used to buy chunks and throw them in the nearby river to make big clouds but I got in trouble doing that so I started putting it in containers to blow them Learned the hard way not to put a chunk in a 2 liter bottle then inside of a cooler because the lid ended up in all the neighbors yards. The cops showed up very quickly but I told them I was trying to save it for later so I kind of got away w/ it... Shortly after that the company stopped selling it to minors. 😂😂

[robrobitaille]

I love how much I learn from your channel. Keep up the good work!

[mRay]

0:42 DO NOT put dry ice in the water for "cool fog effect for Helloween"! Such a fog is dangerous in closed rooms, people already died this way.

[DaveWithMS]

Here in Minnesota, in the winter you can watch ice on the road sublimate and just disappear.

[DANGJOS]

@The Action Lab I always wanted to see you try putting dry ice in a super long tube (>160 feet) of water to see the dry ice melt and boil at the same time. It's probably way to difficult to do though

[djones]

This explains why the money in my wallet disapears with no explanation.

[batlrar]

It makes perfect sense to me that it's water that creates the fog - that's exactly what happens with people's breath when it's cold out! In fact, if it's too cold, like if you're outside of a station on Antarctica, there's no steam coming from your breathe whatsoever, save for a tiny amount within the aura of your own body heat.

[brfisher]

Awesome!! I tried to tell you about this back in May of 2022 but never got a response, glad to finally see you try this out for yourself! :) 👍👍

[Dethleffff]

My dad is a chemist and he told me during his PhD times it was a common prank to take a piece of flexible tubing, put a chunk of dry ice in it and make knots to the ends, sealing the dry ice. Then hide it in each others offices and have it explode at some point :D

[alaskacanoe]

here in Alaska .. it is known that snow and ice disappear during below freezing conditions below 30 degrees F .... this sublimation is estimated to be a huge part of where the actual frozen moisture ( ice and snow) just are gone into the atmosphere..

[spiderdude]

Fun fact:

Liquid CO2 (as well as supercritical CO2) is a great solvent for organic molecules, and is what’s used to extract caffeine from coffee to turn it into decaf coffee. The CO2 is used because it is a green renewable solvent that can be recycled for many extractions, and it is easily removed from the caffeine and collected. It also is very selective and largely does not alter the other flavor compounds in the coffee

[prvashisht]

How's the last thing possible? "If you had ice with no air, it wouldn't submlimate, unless it were in a vacuum". Vacuum doesn't have air, I mean it's a contradictory statement.