Liquid Nitrogen Experiments: Shattering Pennies!

Some pennies are mostly copper and some pennies are mostly zinc. What happens to the different materials when they are cooled with liquid nitrogen and then hit with a hammer?

For those of you who think that what we are doing in this video is illegal, we direct you to Title 18, Chapter 17 of the U.S. Code (Coins and Currency). What's forbidden is the 'fraudulent alteration and mutilation of coins.' There's nothing fraudulent in what we are doing. We aren't trying to make pennies look like dimes or something. There are plenty of (legal) machines at amusement parks and fairs that'll happily smash one of your pennies into a souvenir. No one will send you to jail for that as long as you don't try to pass it off as something that is isn't.

No fraud, no crime.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• liquid
• nitrogen
• penny
• copper
• zinc
• shatter
• smash
• brittle
• science
• education
• fun
• cool
• experiment
• frostbite
• theater
• jefferson
• lab
• jlab
• yt:quality=high

[MileyCyrusFANdd]

WAIT! DOES THE PENNY STILL HAVE A 1 CENT VALUE!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

[JeffersonLab]

@MileyCyrusFANdd I doubt it. Don't think you'd find someone who would accept it as legal tender.

[SpeidelGaming]

I have a question how much does one gallon of Liquid Nitrogen cost and do you need a license to buy it?

[JeffersonLab]

@SpeidelGaming For us, liquid nitrogen costs about $1 a gallon. But, we do buy relatively large volumes of it (about 6,000 gallons a day). I am not aware of any license that's required for purchasing small amounts of nitrogen, although it would be wise to have the appropriate training and equipment needed to safely handle it.

[JeffersonLab]

@MrHammyLOL Yep. 5 cents...

[JeffersonLab]

@Ramon87evans 5 cents in pennies and 10 cents worth of nitrogen. It'll cost more in postage to send a donation in that amount to your school.

[JeffersonLab]

@BaldurdashWoW Try watching some of the free lectures available on YouTube and iTunes.

[BaldurdashWoW]

@JeffersonLab Sweet. I would love to learn all of this again, as I am not in school, and have not been for a long time, so where should one start to get the basics and work their way up into the harder stuff?

[JeffersonLab]

@BaldurdashWoW Kelvin is an absolute temperature scale with its zero point set to absolute zero. The degree 'steps' are the same size as the Celsius scale. The only functional difference between the Kelvin scale and the Celsius scale is where zero is.

Since Kelvin is an absolute scale, you don't say 'degrees' when using it. You'll note that I said '77 Kelvin' and not '77˚ Kelvin.' Properly, I think you're suppose to use the plural 'Kelvins' for anything other than 1. I'm just not that proper...

[IceFireHeartlove]

@JeffersonLab thanks! ill remember that,

[BaldurdashWoW]

@JeffersonLab I am curious, can you guys make a video, or give links to what "Kelvin" is? I am very interested in this, but most sites go way too much into detail for the common person lol

[JeffersonLab]

@KnifeLikeAMexican Making videos isn't our primary job. We do it when we have time. Unfortunately, there hasn't been time lately. More are coming! It'll just take a while.