Monday, January 14, 2008

Carbon Dioxide Curiousities

  • It won't burn.
  • No matter how cold you make it, you can't turn it into a liquid at atmospheric pressures.
  • It sublimes, going directly from a solid (dry ice) to a gas (one way to make very creepy fog).
  • It's heavy. Burning 1 gallon of gasoline (weighing about 8 pounds) produced 25 pounds of CO2.
  • You can make a supercritical fluid out of it - a state of matter that is neither solid, liquid, nor gas.
  • It's a critical ingredient in chocolate chip cookies - produced in situ by the reaction of sodium bicarbonate and the potassium salt of tartaric acid.

2 comments:

David Bradley Science Writer said...

Supercriticality is the most fascinating property of CO2 at once it is an environmental demon and a putative savior!

db

IDOKI SCF Technologies S.L. said...

I love SuperCritical Fluids!
In fact, related to my profession, I've opened a blog about supercritical fluids.

¿do you know that natural sources of supercritical water exists?

C.U.!