The Tiniest Snowstorm

In my last entry (which I wrote about a week before I actually posted it), I introduced the new super-cold freezer that I bought for work. To refresh your memory, the freezer runs at –85 C, which is the same as -121 Fahrenheit. Or, put more bluntly, it’s f*ing cold.

It’s also just about the coolest thing ever. (The literal scientist in me insists that that is not a bad pun, because if it were, it would be wrong.)

Now that it’s been running for a while and I’m satisfied that it will continue to do so, I am having it equipped with a chart recorder to track and record its internal temperature. To do this, I will be having a contractor drill through the outer wall to mount an RTD (probe) inside. The point of this is that I wanted to know if the RTD was long enough to go through the outer wall. To find out, I got out my tape measure and opened the door.

This was the first time anyone had opened that freezer since it was powered up and allowed to cool. The door is normally held shut by two industrial latches.

When you open the main door, all that you see is a stack of what look like cabinet doors, one on top of each other. If you open all of them, it’s just a wide open space inside with no blockage. But the cabinet doors are in there so that you only open as much space as you need and let the cold air stay inside otherwise.

You should also know that since the latest thaw, the weather here has been crazy humid.

Finally, we’re getting to the cool part.

I opened the main door, got out my tape measure, then opened the middle cabinet door, exposing the inner chamber to the outside air.

As soon as the moist air started to make contact with the inner chamber, it condensed and froze in midair. Put directly, it started snowing inside the freezer. The wisps of snow started swirling and settling down onto the inner floor of the unit. It was like looking at a miniature blizzard in a box.

I just love that freezer. I need to get one for my apartment, just on account of the awesomeness factor.

Many people will argue that wanting a –85 C freezer in my living room is too dorky.

I would argue that those people are bad chemists. I’d bet good money that they’d change their minds entirely after I serve them vodka on the (ethanol) rocks. (Pure grain alcohol freezes at –73 C.)





(((Secret closing note: I would have to decide how retarded I felt the critical guests were being while detracting my awesome freezer. If they were nice but misguided people, I would probably not let them drink vodka on the ethanol rocks if there were still visible rocks. If they were just being dumb or nasty, I might let them find out that there is such a thing as a drink that was just “too refreshing”… as I listened to the subtle cracking noise of their shattering teeth and tongues.)))