Monday, August 15, 2011

Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?

Science Tip of the Day:

When applied to dry ice, 70% ethanol does not remain liquid.


I does, however, provide you with the means to make the World's Nastiest Snowball.


Science: Providing you with information you can use, but probably shouldn't.

2 comments:

Abigail said...

why were you freezing ethanol?

Daisy Bateman said...

Poor man's liquid nitrogen: dry ice and ethanol. At 100% the ethanol stays liquid and you can use it to flash-freeze cells in glycerol. I was freezing down some yeast stocks and I couldn't find the big thing of cheap ethanol (with the additive so you can't drink it) and I didn't want to use the expensive, pure stuff, so I figured 70% would be close enough.

It wasn't, but it ended up working okay anyway.