
Student drinks liquid nitrogen...and survives - timr
http://m.wpi.edu/news/19989/nitro.html
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nessus42
When we were in high school, a friend of mine used to get liquid nitrogen from
his father, who was a chemist, and put it on his tongue and blow smoke out his
mouth and nose. I thought he was nuts! That he would crack a tooth, or some
such, but he never did.

IIRC correctly, he stopped when he accidentally swallowed a _TINY_ amount. I
think it made him burp for a while, but other than that, he was apparently
unharmed.

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covati
This is an old story (see the date of 1999?), as a WPI guy ive heard this one
a few times

The guy was attempting to use a cute little physics trick. I'm no physics
major, but the idea is similar to walking on coals. You can have the liquid
nitrogen in your mouth briefly and it doesn't burn you. Swallowing it, however
is a totally different story.

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prezjordan
I'm confused, what was he trying to do? Surely just having liquid nitrogen in
your mouth (without swallowing) would case serious issue.

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cperciva
That was his point -- having liquid nitrogen in your mouth is safer than it
sounds, since you get a gas layer insulating the liquid from the rest of your
mouth.

But in addition to the danger of accidentally swallowing, I've also heard
stories of people having teeth crack by doing this; so I'd say that "safer
than it sounds" is still far from "safe".

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Myrth
Darwin award fail...

