(Dramatic Music)

Hey guys, I'm Brent Rose,

writer and cool hand Luke

and today I am super excited 'cause we're about to make

one of my childhood dreams come true.

We have more than 20 gallons of liquid nitrogen

and we're gonna super freeze some things

that as far as we know, have never been super frozen before

and then we're gonna smash the living hell out of them

and see what happens.

It's pure science at its best

and we're gonna do it all in super slow motion.

So today we're mostly gonna be working

with liquid nitrogen.

The air you breathe is 78 percent nitrogen gas

but when that stuff get down

to negative 323 degrees Fahrenheit, it goes liquid

and it has a lot of really interesting properties.

For starters, it can make things really really brittle.

This is a lock.

This is a hammer.

This is what happens when you hit lock

with a hammer at room temperature.

(dramatic music)

Okay so put a good dent in it

but lock still spins, still definitely locked.

Let's see how it fares when it's super frozen.

I call this one, The Bicycle Thief.

(dramatic music)

[Man] Oh that was almost an incredible disaster.

Everybody okay?

[Man] It did hit your computer.

So that worked.

It completely fractured.

Why does that happen?

In a solid object like this,

the molecules are packed very tightly together

and it looks like it's completely solid

but in fact there's some small spaces in there.

This gives the molecules some give

but when an object is super frozen,

it actually shrinks down

and those molecules essentially become locked.

So when it takes an impact,

it can't flex to absorb the energy

and it shatters in hopefully spectacular fashion.

So we've seen what liquid nitrogen can do

to inorganic materials.

Just imagine what it could do to human flesh.

Let's find out.

In this next test, Peter here is gonna throw

a full 12 ounce cup of liquid nitrogen

directly onto my bare skin.

We call this test, The Cold Shoulder.

[Peter] Alright Brent, you ready?

Here we go.

Woohoohoo!

(dramatic music)

Hoo that is, totally okay.

Uh that was actually very refreshing,

I'm not gonna lie.

Okay so I'm not frostbitten or freezer burned

why?

Because of the leidenfrost effect.

Essentially when a liquid hits an object

that is much much hotter than it,

it bursts into a gas.

At 98.6 degrees my skins is more

than 400 degrees Fahrenheit hotter

than that liquid nitrogen.

So what happens is, it bursts into a gas

and forms a small vapor barrier

that protects me from the freezing liquid.

Now if it had been allowed to pool anywhere,

it would have frozen me really badly,

and I'd be on my way to the hospital now.

Retroactively, don't try that at home.

This is a baseball.

Normally you can wallop the hell out of it

and it'll rebound and come back

to it's natural shape

but let's see what happens when it's super frozen.

You know that scene in The Natural

where Roy Hobbs knocks the cover off the baseball?

Well I call this one, The Natural on Ice,

aka The Natty Ice.

You ready?

Wow it's so cold.

Didn't smash at all.

(dramatic music)

This is a lot tougher than I thought it was gonna be.

Let's try to sledgehammer it.

Oh yeah.

Here we go.

Baseballs are really tough as it turns out.

So why isn't this working?

Well a baseball is really a small plug of cork,

wrapped in hundreds of yards of wool yarn.

That yarn traps a lot of air which makes it

a really good insulator.

Combine that with the toughness

of the molecular bonds of the leather casing

and you've got one very freeze resistant ball.

Okay so we've seen what super freezing does

to some tough stuff.

Let's see what it does with some light delicate things.

We got a peacock feather and a rose.

Let's do her.

Do or die.

I call this one, Every Froze has its Thorn.

(dramatic music)

That's love.

Woah.

Nothing.

That's amazing.

(dramatic music)

So the rose obviously shattered

into a million pieces whereas the peacock feather

never lost its flexibility.

Why?

Because the rose is mostly water in those petals

whereas the feather is mostly air.

So if you ever had any doubt

what great insulation down is,

here's some evidence for you.

This next one is what gave birth

to the idea of this whole episode.

I'm so excited and I have no idea if it's gonna work or not.

I call this one, The Frozen Gallagher.

(laughter)

(dramatic music)

That was so deeply deeply satisfying.

Been dreaming of doing that

ever since I watched Gallagher do it

with normal freshwater melon when I was a kid.

It wasn't totally frozen all the way through,

there's still like a little bit of,

dare I?

So what did we learn here today.

Well when you super freeze something,

molecules that normally have some room to slide around

become more or less locked.

When that happens, things become more brittle

and when you smash the hell out of 'em,

things become more awesome

and if you shoot them with a high speed camera

things become awesomer still.

It's basically just excessive loads of awesome.

But what do you think?

Are there items that you'd like to see us do next time?

Let us know in the comments below,

subscribe if you haven't already,

with all that being said

there's really only one thing left to do.

Thank you Cleveland, goodnight.

(techno music)