Tales from the Shark Tank

We received a shipment of frozen stuff today that came packaged in a thick styrofoam container.  Once I’d gotten the contents into the freezer, I went back, expecting the ice block packaged with it to be one of the reusable ones.  Instead, I found that the white plastic bag read “Dry Ice.  DO NOT TOUCH” in large friendly letters.  My son had been hovering over the whole unpackaging process (and getting between me and the freezer, but that’s another matter), and so was right there.

Dry ice, eh.  And my favorite weather geek standing right there.  Would he like to do a science experiment on fog?  Wouldn’t he just!  So I went and ran some water into the tub, then went back, picked up the plastic bag containing the dry ice, took it into the bathroom, cut it open, and let it fall in.

Fog boiled up so quickly we couldn’t even see the splash we knew must have occurred.  It continued to bubble up from the locus of the ice, covering the water surface and then rising steadily to fill the tub.  He poked the fog with a finger, and proclaimed it cold.  He put his hand in it, carefully away from the block of ice itself, and lowered it carefully until the tip of a finger touched the water, and proclaimed it colder.  Then he tried to get a close look at it.  It was cold enough to hurt his face before he got close, so he came back and got his swim mask.  That took care of the eyes and nose (it’s a snorkeling mask), but it burned his mouth. Back to the swim bag.  He returned to his investigations with his snorkel in his mouth.  He finally got an actual look at how the fog developed, and said that while it was “burny-cold” on his mouth after a minute or so, the mask and snorkel let him stay close long enough to get a good look at the pattern of temperature currents in the fog over the dry ice, and off at the other end of the tub.  I was tremendously impressed by his persistence and ingenuity in getting the look he wanted.

So our unexpected package was a double gift - both the consumable contents and the means to do an impromptu chemistry lesson with my kid.  Or maybe it was a triple - the ice chest it arrived in is far the nicest foam one I’ve seen in a good while.  I’m thinking it should go in the back of my car, to get frozen things home from my favorite grocery in Indy.

And my son was so excited that as soon as dad pulled into the driveway, he was out the door to tell his father all about the bathtub full of burny-cold fog.  That was the best part.