Liquid Nitrogen Station
An attentive reader of one of my previous posts about the diamond plate in an electron microscope could notice a repetitive note: let's pour liquid nitrogen here, let's pour liquid nitrogen there. Sounds like a lot of liquid nitrogen. And it is. When I worked at the Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, it was an everyday workout—to go with a special Dewar bowl and bring 17 liters of liquid nitrogen to the laboratory. Like 13 liters went to pump the air out of the microscope and cool down the specimen during the measurement. The remaining 4 liters evaporated during the night.
It's quite an interesting liquid and, when you have it in abundance, you can have a lot of fun. I heard that our colleagues froze ice cream with it. I myself conducted all the well-known experiments: freeze and cleave a piece of rubber. Dip your hand into it. The most amazing thing was to put a porous plastic which was widespread in the Soviet Union for packing scientific equipment. In normal conditions it's a springy material that you can compress and then it restores its original shape. But when you put it into liquid nitrogen, it becomes extremely brittle, and when you squeeze it, it becomes just a small heap of thin powder.
One more experiment I conducted inadvertently. When I was pouring liquid nitrogen into the photodetector bowl, a narrow stream escaped and soaked my jeans. So, when I unbent my leg, my jeans cracked. Jeans. Cracked. It was fun.