[Rockhounds] Alien worlds

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

Axel,

I don't know if I should share more rocks with you if you are going to 
torture them with stress tests of extreme cold. Last time I bought that 
much dry ice I had to cover a stage in 'smoke'.

But you reminded me of the time I had a big Fourth of July party and 
decided to make ice cream using the NASA formula. I bought 3.5 liters 
of liquid nitrogen for about $30, and had to put down a $500 deposit on 
the Tech Tank I brought it home in. The tank just fit in our chest 
freezer in the basement so I could reduce evaporation over the holiday 
weekend.

Metal bowl, metal spoon, eye and thermal protection, lab coat, lots of 
theatrics. Mix equal parts of normal ice cream stock and liquid 
nitrogen, and stir like heck. Enough 'smoke' to impress anyone, and 
very cold, fine texture, ice cream in about 20 seconds. The more kids 
watching, the better it gets. Guaranteed adrenaline rush.

Have you ever considered sacrificing specimens to science, and use 
liquid helium under vacuum? Helium is fun as a gas, but it is a whole 
lot more fun to play with as a liquid. Why not go extreme? ~1 degree K 
should give great peak separation if your progression holds.

Kreigh


On Monday, October 12, 2009, at 08:55 PM, jb wrote:

> Axel Emmermann wrote:
>>> Cooling to - 176°F is enough to separate those peaks. Cooling to 
>>> -310°F will
>>> actually reveal even finer detail (but may cause your specimen to 
>>> crack and
>>> fall apart).
>>>
>>> Also the band at which F-centres fluoresce in hackmanite gets 
>>> narrower when
>>> cold. (Kreig, that was a cool specimen that got even cooler for a 
>>> while.)