Cold enough to freeze boiling water drop-lets in mid-air!!!
When we woke up for school/work at 6:00 this morning, it was -16 degrees with a windchill of -38 degrees!! Yes, that's darn cold!!
As we watched the school closings scroll across the bottom of the TV screen, one of the station's meteorologists walked outside, threw a cup of boiling water into the air and filmed the result - water droplets freezing in mid-air and hitting the ground as ice crystals.
Not wanting to miss the opportunity for a science experiment, I ran downstairs to put the kettle on for hot water. A few minutes later, we headed out to conduct our own experiment.
With me as the water tosser-
Rowan is the outdoor observer and Gemma as indoor observer-
And Jani as photographer-
We too were able to toss boiling water into the air and watch it freeze in mid-air and hit the ground as ice.
And - it was also cold enough to freeze over our antique windows. The girls are loving the chance to carve designs into the frost - it brings back memories of reading "Little House in the Big Woods" with their frosted over windows. The other windows in the house have been replaced with energy-efficient ones, but we kept two of the anitque decorative ones.
Also, two major miracles today -
1. The Madison Metro School District actually CLOSED school today - this is a major feat as we typically don't close, even when all the districts surrounding us are closed.
2. Our kitchen water pipes DID NOT FREEZE!! I was able to fill the tea kettle with water from the kitchen sink. In years past, before we had the pipes all re-insultated, we could expect our kitchen pipes to freeze over on a night like we had last night - even if we left the heat up and opened up cupboards. So I was thrilled to having running water this morning and not need to head to the basement with a blow dry to defrost pipes. Now the dishwasher is another story - the connection line between it and the sink has been frozen for a few days, so we have to do things the old fashioned way - wash by hand - not a bad feeling though since the hot water warms the hands nicely.
It's now 7:49 AM and we've warmed up to -13 degrees!!
3 comments:
Awesome science experiment! And, STAY WARM! Wow! That is super-duper cold! We've seen the temp on our car register -8 before but that was at 7,000 feet. Next time, you can be sure we'll try to throw boiling water in the air. That is so cool! Errr, cold! :)
What a cool experiment... and your antique windows are beautiful. Looks like a lot of fun for the girls!
Really neat! You do know about making penny impressions on window frost, right? Our frost has only been on the outer window & I'd have to fuss with the inner window to get to it, but I used to have a blast with it when I was a kid.
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