Mad scientist drops exploding pumpkin off UO building
The annual event drew a huge crowd
A classic Halloween symbol took an interesting shape Friday afternoon when students got a chance to see a scientific marvel: liquid nitrogen and pumpkins come together.
The Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society (SAACS) put on their annual pumpkin drop off the top of Lillis Business Complex on Friday where, after a few basic science demonstrations, dropped a regular pumpkin followed by a pumpkin dipped in liquid nitrogen.
The pumpkin was dropped from four stories high
The event got a large turn out; from tourists to students and young children came to see this annual tradition.
“We usually get a pretty good crowd–it’s nice having the kids,” said Chemistry professor Randy Sullivan.
Randy Sullivan, a scientist and a chemistry professor at the University of Oregon
According to Sullivan, the is a tradition that SACCS has been doing every year for “about 10 years.” The event is done between Mole Day (October 23) and Halloween.
SAACS member Mary Earp, a senior biochemistry major, said she’d been part of the tradition for two years now. Last year as the vice president of SAACS, and this year by just being a member.
She said: “It’s a cool thing we do every year, especially this year when we do it off the Lillis complex because you get a bunch of other students who don’t know what liquid nitrogen is or how cold it is or anything like that.”
“It’s a cool thing to do to bring together people that wouldn’t necessarily be seeing science demos or doing anything science related.”
Mary Earp is a senior biochemistry major at the University of Oregon, and a member of SAACS
To kick off the event, Professor Sullivan lit a hydrogen-filled balloon on fire, creating an explosion.
Professor Sullivan setting the hydrogen balloon on fire, causing a very loud explosion
Sullivan also lit a ball of steel wool on fire, and placed it into a flask of pure oxygen gas.
As a result, the steel wool catches fire and decomposes.
Sullivan lighting the steel wool on fire and placing it into pure oxygen gas.
Next, he sprayed several different liquid compounds over a flame to create different flame colors. As you may (or may not) know, if you put a solution with a metal over a flame, the flame turns a distinct color based on the metals present.
Sullivan using a Sodium solution to change the color of the flame to a yellow-orange. This is often seen in sodium vapor lamps like street lights
Sullivan using a Lithium solution to create a red flame
Sullivan using a Copper solution to create a yellow-green flame color
Finally, the moment of truth: the pumpkin drop!
According to Sullivan, every experiment must have a control group. For this one, they used a regular pumpkin and dropped it from the same height as they will for the pumpkin covered in liquid nitrogen.
The control group: a regular pumpkin
Once you realize a normal pumpkin literally falls flat when dropped from a four-story building, there is nothing left to do except do the same with a pumpkin covered in liquid nitrogen….or two.
Liquid nitrogen pumpkin falling through the air, leaving steam in its path
If you don’t know much about liquid nitrogen, then here is a quick rundown: it is really really cold. Not like just below freezing; try -321 degrees Fahrenheit (-196 degrees Celsius).
Also, it makes things behave more like glass than it does a bouncy ball, and leaves a thick cloud of smoke behind since the difference of temperature between the liquid nitrogen and the gas in the air is so large. Now, you should be able to guess what the product looks like, but it is a lot cooler in person.
Liquid nitrogen pumpkin number one after it was dropped and shattered like glass.
Once the first pumpkin was dropped, everyone was told to step back even further since the chances of getting hit by the shards gets higher as you add more pumpkins covered in liquid nitrogen, obviously. Then, the last pumpkin was dropped.
The second and final pumpkin after it was dropped; fragments covering the ground
Halloween isn’t just about costumes and candy, rather add in some liquid nitrogen and you can have just as good of a time. Who said science experiments can’t be fun?