Tales from the Prep Room: Argon Ice

The Ri's very own demo technician, Andrew Marmery experiments with the element Argon in the Ri Prep Room.

At room temperature Argon is an inert gas, requiring temperatures of below -189.3 degrees Celsius to freeze into a solid. The temperature range at which Argon exists as a liquid is extremely narrow (three/ four degress). As it begins to melt under room temperature it passes into its gas state almost instaneously.

[tinooftime]

2:33 "this is probably the point where I might start to need a glove"
*cuts to the absolute mad man not using a glove, without a single care in the world*

[hevnervals]

I don't study or work with chemistry, but I still find this stuff really interesting

[DanHarkless_Halloween_YTPs_etc]

Thank you! I was just looking at the photo they have of a piece of rapidly melting argon ice at the top of the Wikipedia "Phase (matter)" article, and wanted to see it as a video. I figured one of you YouTube science demo boffins would have me covered, and you did not disappoint! I wonder if the way the "black goo" in the opening scene of "Prometheus" reacts after the engineer opens the "tin" was visually modeled on rapidly melting / sublimating non-water ice.

P.S. The tale of argon's anomalous molar mass was a nice bonus.

[zachcrawford]

How does Argon solidify with a complete outer electron shell? Does it have a crystalline structure?

[richardlyles]

Top notch reporting! Andrew Marmery really knows his stuff! Thank you. Gloves mate! Gloves!

[soggybons]

Are there any practical application of freezing argon like this? Or is it mainly just an experiment for his own amusement?

[DrRichardKirk]

I remember a friend finding this by accident. A good, easy way to dry air is to pass it through a tube in a dewar of liquid nitrogen. He wanted dry air for a fatigue experiment, so he left the thing running. After half an hour tube had quite a bit of liquid. So we went off and looked up the boiling point of Argon, and that's what it was. Much more argon than water.

[bernardonaka]

anoying whistle from 0:58 to 1:41 XD! love your videos!

[FASELstudios]

"This is pobably the point where i might start to need a glove..."
continues without gloves...

[louistournas]

Very nice stuff. This is the first time that I see someone freezing argon.

[povnw]

That was awesome! The ice just evaporated. I wonder what a lake of argon would look like.

[siztem]

I know it probably wouldn't work out very well in my favor, but I can't help but wonder what one of those would taste like

[------country-boy-------]

the internet just keeps getting better and better !

[granddad]

I want to see an 'ice' sculpture made out of Argon? Maybe there is a world that has Argon 'snow'? I've watched a video where a lab technician 'breathed' in argon...it had similar effects of Helium on the vocal cords, but lower tones. Its amazing stuff. Science does have the novelty factor down on finding strange but wonderful things.

[dansheppard]

Why does it freeze at such a high temperature (compared to, say, Helium?) with it being a noble gas. Is it van de Waals type stuff holding it together?

[Tonicwine]

Interesting video. Quite like the videos Andrew Marmery makes

[DANGJOS]

The cool thing is that, it is actually sublimating and boiling kind of at the same time. it's kind of like a wet dry ice

[douro]

Stefan Janos at the High Energy Physics Lab of the University of Bern made an enormous slug of solid argon in one of the lab's cryostats.

[Calilasseia]

Is the conical depression seen in those solid argon slugs the result of surface tension forces? Only each of the three slugs of solid argon had a conical depression in the upper surface, which made me wonder if the element has a tendency to creep up the sides of the glass tube during its short time in the liquid phase.

[weirdlittlekid]

love this show :) it helps fulfill all the "what if?" questions I would ask my science teacher to which he would respond either "this cool thing happens that I can't show you" or "I dunno".