Freeze-thaw weathering occurs when rocks are porous (contain holes) or permeable (allow water to pass through). When temperatures drop, the water freezes and expands causing the crack to widen. The ice melts and water makes its way deeper into the cracks. The process repeats itself until the rock splits entirely.

deposition, creep, and weathering.

Freeze-thaw The formation of ice can also break rocks. If water gets into a crack in a rock and then freezes, it expands and pushes the crack further apart. When the ice melts later, water can get further into the crack. When the water freezes, it expands and makes the crack even bigger.

Frozen material becomes brittle. Even when dropped on the floor, it breaks. The ice breaks but you can not break the water which is liquid.

A frozen body is hard as rock, it won’t shatter nor crumble. If cut with extreme forces, it would probably break apart cleanly.

When things are frozen with liquid nitrogen, their particles slow tremendously, and the spaces between the particles almost vanish. When this happens, the objects can be shattered if a strong enough force (say, a sledge hammer) makes an impact, which is exactly what Rose set out to test in the video.

Liquid nitrogen is just very cold nitrogen. It is 320oF below zero (-196oC). It’s so cold that it freezes anything it touches almost instantly.

Now when you freeze any material it makes it more difficult for the material to move along its slip planes and eventually the force required to allow the material to shift along its slip plane becomes greater than what the material can handle and it will shatter. So yes, you can cause metal to shatter by freezing it.

Now, liquid nitrogen boils and evaporates at room temperature, but that process is too slow to cool it enough to freeze. As the liquid nitrogen boils away faster and faster, it cools down the remaining liquid nitrogen until it eventually reaches the freezing point of -346. This solid nitrogen can’t stay, however.

Although liquid nitrogen is used to make ice cream and other edible science foods, the nitrogen evaporates into a gas before these items are consumed, so it isn’t actually present by the time they are ingested. Bottom line: Liquid nitrogen is never safe to drink.

As it turns out, you don’t have to have any special licenses or anything to purchase the super cold liquid, but you will need a well-insulated container. Check out the video above to learn a little more about the process of purchasing liquid nitrogen.

Liquid nitrogen is not available over-the-counter. Instead, the product that removes warts in a similar process uses dimethyl ether. It only cools to about 59 degrees below zero Celsius, whereas liquid nitrogen reaches approximately 195 degrees below zero Celsius. Both will cause serious injury if used improperly.

Liquid nitrogen can be purchased from welding supply stores and artificial insemination companies. Producers who use artificial insemination and have an industry representative service their liquid nitrogen tanks every few months can take advantage of this access to prepare for freeze branding.

No over-the-counter wart removal product contains liquid nitrogen. Instead, they contain a mixture of dimethyl ether, propane, and sometimes isobutane. Home freezing products may not be as effective as cryosurgery.

Starting the day after your procedure, wash the treated area gently with fragrance-free soap and water daily. Put Vaseline ® or Aquaphor ® on the treated area every day for 2 weeks. This will help the area heal and will keep it from crusting.

The discomfort usually lasts less than five minutes. Some hours after liquid nitrogen treatment your skin may become slightly swollen and red; later on it may form a crust, scab, or blister. The scab will fall off by itself in one to two weeks but will heal quicker if you follow the instructions below.

Application of liquid nitrogen is often used to treat skin lesions such as warts, molluscum and keratoses. Although the exact mechanism of action is unclear, freezing damages the treated lesion preventing its survival. Treatment rarely requires anesthesia and almost never leaves a scar.

Freezing (cryotherapy). This procedure treats the spot by using a cotton-tipped swab to apply liquid nitrogen for five seconds or less. This destroys the extra pigment. As the area heals, the skin appears lighter. Spray freezing may be used on a small grouping of spots.

The most common side effects of any type of cryotherapy are numbness, tingling, redness, and irritation of the skin. These side effects are almost always temporary. Make an appointment with your doctor if they don’t resolve within 24 hours.

One bout of Whole Body Cryotherapy has been shown to burn between 500 and 800 calories. That’s a lot of calories that get burned for standing in a tube for 3 minutes! That many calories is equivalent to running for 40-60 minutes at a 10 minute mile pace.

It’s recommended that you have up to three minutes of cryotherapy one to five times a week, depending on the results you’re after and how new you are to the therapy. Athletes are using cryotherapy to aid recovery and improve their athletic performance during the game.

So far, scientists have failed to find strong evidence that cold therapies can help with much of anything, including muscle soreness or recovery from exercise. There may even be dangers, such as frostbite. Full-body cryotherapy might carry occupational hazards, too.

Does Cryotherapy Hurt? Cryotherapy doesn’t hurt, although the exposure to the cold is often a strange sensation during your first cryotherapy session. Your body will stay dry the entire time, and your head will remain outside the cryotherapy chamber.

Research findings that cryotherapy may reduce inflammation suggest that it could treat mental health conditions linked to inflammation.

Cryotherapy activates collagen production in the skin which repairs broken connections in the skin–thus reducing the appearance of cellulite! In addition to increasing collagen and smoothing out areas of cellulite, cryotherapy reduces fat deposits; fat cells are extremely intolerant of the cold.