Viral Video Shows Man Putting His Hand Through Molten Metal. So What's Really Going On?

A video isdoing the round on Redditthat   show a gentleman’s gentleman with the manifest ability to put his bridge player in   molten metal without being spite .

In the footage , he move up to a flow of liquid metal , take away his condom baseball glove , and continue to shove his paw into the cherry - raging liquid . After , he walks away like it ’s no big deal , completely uninjured .

Do n’t judge this at habitation , even if your home does happen to control an industrial molten metal sluice .

So how   is he capable to do this without melting his arm or give himself extreme burns ? Is he some kind of reverse - eradicator that ’s resistant to liquefied metal ? Sadly , no . However ,   the answer is still pretty cool .

The ability   is most probable due to the Leidenfrost effect . The Leidenfrost effect is what do water droplet to dance around on an extremely hot hob , rather than instantly evaporating .

When a liquid is dropped onto a hot plate , the bottom layer of liquid immediately evaporate . This go forth a protective layer of gas between the raging home plate and the rest of the water droplet , preventing striking between the two and slowing heating plant transport .

It ’s excuse rather neatly in this video from British TV showQI , host by Stephen Fry .

The same effect protects the man in the video , who swipes his hand through liquefied metal like it ’s   an ordinary tap .

For an ( extremely ) brusk amount of time , the moisture on his skin boils instantly , constitute a protective layer on his skin and stop over him from bear upon the limpid metal straight off . This allows him to hook his hired hand through it without being burn . If he did so   for even a fraction of a 2d longer , however , it is likely he would get cauterise badly . So do n’t   try this at home .

The same effect can be seen with   liquid N . As liquified nitrogen boils at -196 ° C ( -321 ° F ) , it instantly vaporizes when it meet a   warm   Earth’s surface ( for example a floor or a human script ) . This create   a layer of gas pedal between itself and the Earth’s surface . As a result , there are a circle of cool video on YouTube of citizenry pour liquid nitrogen onto their hands , and , awfully , a few videos where hoi polloi put their hands into nitrogen for too long and it all went badly wrong .

Here ’s one of the cool videos , where the Leidenfrost effect worked perfectly .