[Short] What does liquid nitrogen taste like?
Ever wondered what liquid nitrogen tastes like?
You can try this at home: If you submerge some marshmallows in liquid nitrogen for a few seconds, and let them warm up for a minute or two, you will safely be able to eat them. (The numbers are exaggerated as a safety precaution)
Having tried this on multiple occasions, I found that they taste just like normal marshmallows, just cooler, from which I concluded that liquid nitrogen tastes like nothing.
This seems to be compatible with the findings of the other answers. Except for the guy who accidentally ate his tongue.
This works because of marshmallows’ low specific heat capacity of about 2 J/(g∗C) meaning they quickly regain heat after having been cooled down which lets you safely eat them. They are therefore also terrible insulators as they don’t require much energy to change temperature.
As soon as the marshmallows are warmed up again all the liquid nitrogen will be evaporated and gone :-)
While most of it will evaporate, some of it will crystallize in the marshmallow.
It's really just a fun experiment more than anything else. We could have come to the same conclusion from just breathing as about 78% of air is Nitrogen which is tasteless, and odorless.
What kind of crystals would that be? :-) N2 is rather inert...(luckily, as we inhale large amounts of it every day, as you rightly pointed out)
Well, it was inaccurate of me calling it a crystal; it's more like trapped gas bobbles. The marshmallow will look defaced though.
It´s a fascinating agent and it´s interesting to explore what it does to different objects. Thanks for sharing this fun experiment!
You could never taste liquid nitrogen as it is -196 C, were you to try to actually taste it your tongue would freeze. The only thing present in a marshmallow when you tried to eat it would be nitrogen gas rather than the liquid form. The liquid just couldn't exist at temps where you could put the marshmallow in your mouth :)
I wish I had done this in school as a chemistry experiment!!
You don't need to be at school to do this.