It’s pretty cold in New York City today, but it isn’t negative 41 degrees cold. If I threw a pot of boiling water out the office window, there would just be angry people on the street below. What happens if you threw that same pot of water off a balcony in Siberia, where it actually is 41 below zero Celsius? You get instant snow, a lot of steam, and respectable number of YouTube views.
One thing to remember here is that because of the Mpemba effect, hot water freezes faster than cold water. Here’s a nice simple article explaining why from Phys.org. So this would most likely not work with cold water. It could freeze before it hits the ground, but it probably wouldn’t evaporate the way the near-boiling water does.
Another fine fact, is that the temperature in the video is so close to the point where both Celsius and Fahrenheit meet (-40) that I almost got away with not saying which scale was being used.
(via YouTube)
- Russian elephants are given vodka to survive the winter
- Sometimes frozen waste falls from the skies
- Russia’s recent iTunes launch was plagued with porn
