COLD OF LIQUID AIR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22499, 17 August 1936, Page 11

COLD OF LIQUID AIR

GREAT FREEZING POWERS LUNCHEON DEMONSTRATION Members of the Legacy Club, Sydney, expressed amazement recently when Mr. F. M. Wills, a representative of the chemical industry, told them that he had often eaten whisky, rum, gin and other spirits with a knife and fork. Mr. Wills was demonstrating the properties of liquid air, the intensely low temperature of which makes it possible to freeze every known liquid, including spirits and oils which were for long regarded by scientists as unfreezable. An amusing touch of melodrama was provided when Mr. Wills was explaining that liquid air, being compressed from 800 times its volume of ordinary air, would expand and explode very violently if placed in a sealed container. At this point an ominous rumbling startled the audience, and there was perhaps a hint of relief in the laughter when it was realised that some practical joker was manipulating the loudspeaker. Mr. Wills dropped an egg into a beaker of liquid air, and in a few seconds it was frozen so hard that it could be used to drive a nail. He explained, however, that the fertility of the egg would not bo affected by the freezing, and that most bacteria not only lived but thrived in liquid air, although its temperature was minus 397 degrees Fahrenheit. The lecturer said the effect of liquid air on human flesh was that of intense frostbite, but demonstrated that it was possible to immerse a finger in the liquid for a very brief time without illeffects, because the heat of the hand momentarily repelled the cold. If the finger were left in a few seconds too long, it would be so frozen that a sharp tap would break it off. The only substance unaffected by liquid air was leather, and scientists could not explain its immunity. Liquid air was used in Australia only for the manufacture of oxygen gas, but in Japan and in Europe it was used to drive machinery, and in the Ural Mountains it was compulsory to use it for blasting.