Liquid Nitrogen kits

50-100ml but it's not available in shops.

The first thing to know about this is that you can't buy convenient small containers of liquid nitrogen off the shelf in shops and store them at home. It doesn't work like that. The problem is that nitrogen is much lighter than butane, which you can get in small aerosols. If you tried to squeeze nitrogen into a can you'd find it would need to be an extremely strong can! At room temperature, nitrogen is a gas, and so the cylinders would have to be immensely strong, like oxygen cylinders. For this reason, it's generally best to avoid trying to keep nitrogen at pressure and much easier to just keep it in well-insulated cool flasks.

No flask is perfect, so the stuff is expected to evaporate slowly off. Don't try to stop it doing this. It will explode!

However, even though the industry standard for a liquid nitrogen flask is the five gallon (25 litre) Dewar, complete with loose cork, it's quite possible to store liquid nitrogen for a day or two in a Thermos flask of the type used for keeping tea warm! They're just as good at keeping the liquid nitrogen cold as they are at keeping the tea warm, and are usually made quite well, and won't often smash when the liquid at minus 196 degrees Celsius is poured in.

So, to get some liquid nitrogen, it's best to get some flasks and to look for places that already have huge quantities of liquid nitrogen being stored. The sorts of places that have liquid nitrogen are: hospitals, physics labs, mortuaries, strawberry freezing factories, cryonics facilities, and anywhere that's using superconducting magnets.

When you arrive at the place and ask nicely if they might spare some liquid nitrogen, your chances of being granted your request tend to be improved by:

1. Your reasons for requiring some liquid nitrogen.

2. The size of your flasks (bigger = better).

3. Your demonstrated safety-conscious knowledge.

4. Charm.

Generally, if you've got some kind of personal scientific interest in the behaviour of liquid nitrogen and/or wish to put on a memorable educational demonstration, and you've got some reasonable flasks and the good sense to not screw the lids on, and you ask nicely, you're in with a good chance of winning yourself some liquid nitrogen.

Good luck!
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mollymoo said:
Hmmm that belongs in the same pigeon hole as the water-cooled psu :)
Both sound a bit risky to me :)
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Risky, schmisky...lol...think of the overclocking possibilities one can achieve :D I am off to get me some liquid nitrogen and I know just the place and who to ask :D
 
The overclocking possibilities are tremendous some russian dudes were messing with it years ago and you know how good a safety record they have :)
 
I love the fact that you have to drive home with your thermos flasks full of liquid nitogen and the tops off.

I'm not holding that between my legs in the car! :eek:
 
loving the advice on obtaining liquid nitrogen and puting it in a Thermos which "won't often smash when the liquid at minus 196 degrees Celsius is poured in"

Oh alright i'll just finish me tea and then we can begin the transfer :p
 
Would you need to keep buying the liquid nitrogen ...... would it run out or is it a sealed system or is that asking for an explosion ?
 
It's just literally a pot, so as it boils off you need to keep adding more. That's why it's not sustainable for everyday use; phase change is still the best cooling method but it's a lot more expensive than water.
 
Liquid Nitrogen will give you a few hours of ultra sub zero benchmarking fun - that it, parties over, nothing to see here anymore. As reflux said it is not a everyday option.

The hours of prep, solving the condensation problems alone would take all the fun out of it for me.
Oh oops, sorry guys the water vapour in my breath just shorted a cap, again :o
 
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