3 ms·

Many Canadians have known about this for a while, here is what it looks like... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I_K6wAARLio https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I_K6wAA

• refurb 6y ago
  I’ve done it before in -40C weather and the liquid water doesn’t freeze, just the vapor coming off. Same effect as seeing your breath in cold weather.
  • bacon_waffle 6y ago
    It definitely can all freeze, -40 (conveniently the same in F and C) is about the point where the trick starts working well, but the effect gets more pronounced as the temperature goes lower.
    • refurb 6y ago
      I guess it depends on what you mean by “all”? I did it with a cup of boiling water and most of it fell back down as water.
      • bacon_waffle 6y ago
        If it's cold enough, and you throw a cup of boiling hot water in to the air, every bit of the thrown water will turn in to something like snow, and no liquid comes back down. It seems like the size of the flung water droplets is important, like if the water is thrown more vigorously the effect is more pronounced. I wintered at the South Pole in 2014, the year the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was a big thing. One of our crew did it, outside. We discovered a similar effect: when it's even colder out, maybe -80s F: ice water makes what looks like a cloud of steam - in the video (sorry, can't find it quickly) it looked a bit like he was cheating.
        • refurb 6y ago
          Must depend on technique. I could never get it to completely freeze, but the coldest was -40C. I could see if you can disperse it into small enough droplets it would work.