What Happens If You Drink Liquid Nitrogen?

if you took a big old gulp of liquid nitrogen would you survive I mean this stuff is cold we're talking cold cold infamously it can chill something to such a level that if it's dropped it will shatter and with that we come to Brainerd who first science will take a big gulp of liquid nitrogen so we can see what will happen wait wait Brainerd we were kidding oh boy you really are a trooper huh well how about this let's have you run a few experiments to find out why anything that is doused in this stuff shatters what would happen if it got on your skin and then talked about what would happen if you decided to take a sip we've even got a chilling real-life story of when someone actually did this oh you heard that right so without further ado let's learn what in the world is going on with a liquid nitrogen before we get into what liquid nitrogen is we better talk about good old-fashioned nitrogen nitrogen is the seventh element on the periodic table of elements it is quite common here on earth as it makes up approximately seventy eight point zero three percent of our atmosphere if you want to put that in perspective our red neighbor Mars has nitrogen in its atmosphere as well but only two point seven percent so yeah we've got this in abundance here in gaseous form it is considered extremely stable it is what is known as a diatomic gas that's because it will bond with other nitrogen atoms so di'ja meaning two and atomic referring to the atoms it is colorless odorless tasteless and truth be told harmless this stuff isn't flammable or poisonous as far as the elements go it's kind of like a slice of white bread with nothing on it and not even toasted but as boring as it may seem it is an absolutely essential element for all life on Earth it is a fundamental building block used by ourselves it is found in our nucleic acids which make up DNA and RNA and our amino acids which build peptides and proteins all in all this stuff accounts for about 3% of the human body Hey bread may be boring but it's necessary to make a sandwich just like nitrogen is necessary for you to make you brainerd so now that we have a grasp on what nitrogen is let's discuss liquid nitrogen simply put this is nitrogen in its liquid state all matter has a solid liquid and gaseous state which state it's in depends on temperature as well as composition for nitrogen it's boiling points or when it will turn from liquid to a gas is negative 320 degrees Fahrenheit if you dropped the temperature just a little further to negative 348 degrees Fahrenheit it would now be at its freezing point and thus it would now be in a solid state to give you a little perspective of just how cold this is negative 320 degrees is about three times colder than the coldest place on earth which was clocked at negative 128 degrees in Antarctica in 1983 I mean there's no way around it this stuff is crazy called so what does this mean for us here on earth trying to get a hold of some liquid nitrogen well to put it bluntly that level of cold is at such an extreme level that it just can't be found naturally on our planet so how do we have a liquid nitrogen at all good question here's the answer there's actually a few methods that scientists have discovered to make this super cold substance one of the most common ways is through compressing air than cooling it after the air is depressurized the various gases will transform into their liquid states each element in the air will have a different boiling point so all you have to do is extract the element you want at a different point during this distillation process in this case we want nitrogen another common way to get this colder than called element is to use a device called a cryo cooler for this method gaseous nitrogen will be put into a Dewar named for its inventor James Dewar which is a special type of flask that can hold a vacuum they are double walled usually made of stainless steel and can hold the liquid nitrogen from anywhere from a few hours to up to a full week the next step is simple the cryocooler will cool the nitrogen and as the temperature drops eventually it will turn into its liquid form and voila liquid nitrogen so now we know how to get our liquid nitrogen and we know that it is freakishly cold stuff but why would we even want to make it aren't we just setting ourselves up to accidentally drink it after all on a hot summer day if we saw a sign that says don't drink extremely cold well that's gonna be one of the first things that brain you're Drita's 4 ah no brainier don't do it we were just speculating here whew let's get back to why scientists even make this stuff in the first place well if you're a fan of ice cream you should be a fan of liquid nitrogen as its used as a coolant for rolled ice cream which if you haven't tried it you must it's fantastic and very fun to watch being made if you ask us basically cream is poured onto a super cold metal surface and then is scooped in such a way that it is rolled ice cream when it is all said and done liquid nitrogen has been used as a way to cool the metal sheet or to flash freeze the cream and/or other ingredients it's incredibly tasty but that only scratches the surface of this stuff's uses liquid nitrogen has been used in the entertainment industry as a fog machine commonly used in theater or magic shows and even in Hollywood to get that spooky atmosphere in your favorite horror movie ever have to get a wart removed one treatment is to freeze the ward off with a few sprays of liquid nitrogen it may be painful but it's a safe and effective way to kill the wart and eventually it'll fall off we'd say it's a better choice than the alternatives your dermatologist can use like either cutting the wart off or using a laser ouch but the uses don't stop their brain eared this stuff is used to keep food products cool as they are transferred long distances to cryopreserve body fluids like blood over a long period of time and also as a general coolant for machinery you may even have some cooling your computer at home it's incredibly useful stuff but you shouldn't take it lightly because it can be incredibly dangerous too liquid nitrogen is so cold that any contact with the skin is gonna hurt I mean when doctors use it as a wart remover they only use a little bit at a time usually through a spray if someone poured the freezing liquid onto say your arm the skin that it would come in contact with would succumb to cold burns or even frostbite your skin would turn white or even bluish gray and after the pain you may even experience feelings of numbness if you were able to get the liquid nitrogen off your skin in time you might only get away with the affected area blistering and eventually turning black due to the skin being dead but if you kept pouring or if you dunked your whole arm into the Dewar flask and kept it there you'd be in a lot of trouble maybe you've seen those science experiments where someone takes a banana and drops it into liquid nitrogen for a few minutes then they drop the banana on the ground but here's the thing as soon as it hits the ground it shatters like glass into a million pieces this is because the water that is naturally inside the banana will come in contact with the liquid nitrogen heat it up and cause the nitrogen to turn into a gas again at the same time the water will freeze and form into millions of tiny ice crystals these crystals are weakly held together add this to the fact that the liquid nitrogen damages the cell walls of the banana and as soon as it hits the ground it's gone the same can be assumed of a body part if it was submerged in liquid nitrogen and now we come to the question of the hour what if you drink this stuff well we got to say this would be one of the most incredibly painful and excruciating ly dumb things you could do now since the liquid nitrogen wouldn't sit in any one place for too long it wouldn't cause your whole esophagus to shatter or anything but you would receive cold burns all down your throat and depending on how much you ingest you could risk having it collecting your stomach causing your innards to freeze the only upside we can give you is that because the temperature of the human body is so high above liquid nitrogen's boiling point it would very quickly turn into its gaseous form so again it kind of depends on how much you would drink with regards to how much damage you're gonna sustained we'd say at bare minimum you'd get a ton of internal cold burns and at maximum think of the banana now I bet you're thinking this could never happen I mean who in their right mind would do such a thing well it has happened and it was just as terrible as you can imagine an 18 year old from Heysham Lancashire in England named Gabby Scanlon was celebrating her birthday at a bar and took two shots of the liqueur Jagermeister laced with liquid nitrogen it was supposed to give the drinks a sort of cool smoky mystifying quality but the only mystifying part of this story is what happens next after the second shot Gabby felt excruciating pain in her stomach so much so that her friends rushed her to the nearby hospital and after a cat scan the doctors found a large hole in her stomach not only that all the lining in her stomach was destroyed doctors had to remove her stomach and connect her esophagus directly to her bowels now she can only eat small meals but doctors say over time her small intestine will grow a small pouch to digest her food all this just from a few drops of liquid nitrogen in a shot this really is serious stuff we say when it comes to liquid nitrogen treat it with respect it is incredibly useful and can even be used for fun things like smoke machines or delicious ice cream but it's serious stuff if not handled properly we can't bring up that frozen banana enough Brainard next time you're thinking of cooling off on a hot day with a swig of liquid nitrogen just think of the banana think of the banana [Music] 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Channel: Brainiac

Views: 317,927

Rating: 4.8728848 out of 5

Keywords: Brainiac, liquid nitrogen, freezing, cold, frostbite, cold burns, science, frozen, experiment, fun, animated

Id: VcjgL1YBcRE

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 23 2020