Nothing up their sleeves
A reader suggested to me that this demonstration of the density of sulfur hexafluoride gas was cool.
I concur.
(As normal for gases denser than air, talking with a lungful of sulfur hexafluoride does indeed make your voice deeper, the opposite of the “helium effect”. Been there, done that.)
Some more from the Bonn Physics Show:
This is essentially the same principle as is used by thermal lances.
Note the pale blueness of liquid oxygen. And the gratuitous use of the Terminator theme.
On the subject of unlicensed music…
…nerds will be nerds.
Find more, including a bloke in a Faraday cage, the Doppler effect demonstrated by swinging a speaker around your head, a liquid nitrogen bomb, hydrodynamic propulsion and the good old ping-pong balls and mousetraps, here.
Mmmmm, nitrous, (homer drool sound).
Comment by RichVR — January 12, 2007 @ 9:12 am
friends and I used to do bulbs back in high school, but for some time now, they've been next to impossible to find.
I'd heard that they'd been taken off public shelves because some idiot kids got themselves in hospital or maybe killed because they mistook CO2 for NO, and thought it would be great to put their heads in plastic bags full of it.
Dan, are you able to confirm this or otherwise divulge what happened to supermarket bulbs? And more importantly, what can the average Australian citizen do when they feel like having fuzzy toes and having pinball machines go off inside their head?
Comment by Ax0r — January 12, 2007 @ 1:46 pm
I don't know the root cause for cream whipper bulbs becoming so difficult to buy in Australia. For whatever reason, they made it illegal (in NSW at least) for minors to buy them, which meant most supermarkets stopped stocking them altogether, and the minors went back to healthy booze and cigarettes, which are now no harder for them to obtain.
There's nothing at all illegal about bulbs for grown-ups, though, and you can buy them from catering suppliers, or direct from the importers.
Or on eBay!
Comment by Daniel Rutter — January 12, 2007 @ 2:47 pm
I get mine from a smoke shop in Greenwich Village, NYC. $13.00 US for a box of 24, a discount for bulk purchases. Just a short subway ride from my house in Brooklyn.
Comment by RichVR — January 13, 2007 @ 6:39 am