Science Fair - Freezing Liquids A young scientist puts liquid nitrogen to use for the science fair email to friend
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11-year-old scientist Greg Gassen had a great idea for his science fair project. The only problem? He didn't have access to liquid nitrogen. That's when he contacted our offices to see if Steve could help him locate some liquid nitrogen... and when Steve found out what Greg wanted to do, he decided to join in on the fun.

Greg knew that water had a unique physical property... it expands when frozen instead of contracting like most other liquids. So, Greg was on a mission to discover other liquids that might have this same property.

Materials

Liquid Nitrogen... this is a great time to find your local chemistry teacher to help you with your project, as liquid nitrogen is not available to everyone.
Glass cylinders or test tubes
Safety glasses
Styrofoam cups

Experiment
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Reviews

Greg set up his experiment by using water as the control - the variable that doesn't change. He knew that the water would expand, so he used that data as a catalyst for determining if other liquids expanded or contracted when they were frozen with the liquid nitrogen.

How does it work?

Greg discovered that a surprising amount of household liquids actually expanded when they froze instead of contracting. In fact, some of the liquids blew the bottoms right of off the glass cylinders!