The nineteenth-century source reports that liquefied nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, could freeze water placed in a red-hot platinum crucible. The effect depended on two separate processes: rapid evaporation removed heat from the surroundings, while a vapour cushion prevented the water and the liquefied gas from making direct contact with the hot platinum.[1]
According to The World of Wonders, the nitrous oxide was liquefied under a pressure of 450 pounds per square inch. When released, its rapid evaporation produced a temperature nearly 200 degrees below water’s freezing point. Under an exhausted air-pump receiver, the source says the cold reached very nearly 300 degrees below the temperature of ice.[2]
The reported demonstration placed some of the liquefied gas in a red-hot platinum crucible, then added a small quantity of water. Despite the crucible’s intense heat, the water was said to turn into ice.[3]
The account is not that the hot platinum itself became cold. Rather, the liquefied nitrous oxide evaporated so rapidly that it carried heat away, and the intervening vapour layer prevented the water from being directly heated by the platinum. The source therefore presents the freezing as a brief balance between powerful evaporative cooling and suppressed contact heat transfer.[7][8]
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