Having Fun With Cold Weather Experiments

There are days when experiments become necessary.  Today was such a day.

We were out of town during the extreme cold weather earlier this month so even though we’re a bit late, today, we embarked on some of the cold weather experiments that others already did a few weeks ago.

We threw the cup of boiling water and then the pot of boiling water into the air to see it crystalize.  It worked.  By the way, it also worked when we used some boiling hot chicken soup broth.

We placed a cup of room temperature water outside and timed its change from liquid to solid ice.  It took approximately seventy-five minutes—frankly, that was longer than I thought it would take.

We took a wet t-shirt outside, shook it out in the air about fifteen or twenty times and the cloth became solid enough that we were then able to stand it up.  It actually assumed a pretty fashionable pose.

We confirmed the hypothesis that walking outside barefoot in the snow when the temperature is -5 feels painful.   Alright, I will grant that this finding is somewhat subjective but I believe it is fair to say that it is valid, nevertheless. 

As a minor side note to the barefoot snow walking experiment, it was interesting to discover that my feet felt colder on the sidewalk and felt warmer when I actually stepped into the snow.  I’m relatively certain this is something that will need to be published in scientific journals.

Then I said to my family, “Should I put on shorts and a tank top and roll around in the snow to see how that feels?”

They all responded by immediately saying, “NOOOO!!!!!”  And they looked at me like I might be crazy.  (Hmm, that’s a look I’ve seen before.)

Because that feedback was unanimous, forceful and convincing I decided to accept their advice. 

Since we don’t have the hard data, I guess we’ll just have to make the fairly reasonable assumption that rolling around in the snow when the temperature is -5 would be cold in an unpleasant way.  Sometimes every experiment—despite the potential comic value—just can’t be undertaken.