Over the winter holiday we received a Styrofoam package of food which was cooled by a giant slab of dry ice! So of course we had to break off chunks of it and put it into water. The problem was that the dry ice was the size of a text book.
So we had to break it up some how. The most expedient way I could think of was to heat up an aluminium bracket in a pan of hot water, and then use it like a knife to try and cut the dry ice. It sort of worked, but the ice cooled the bracket down fairly quickly, so it took several passes.
When the hot bracket was placed against the ice, the bracket vibrated in my hands and made a high-pitched hum as the sublimating carbon dioxide rushed away from it. Eventually, I was able to separate a chunk about the size of three ice-cubes from the main body.
I forget why, but a chunk of dry ice got put onto a saucepan lid, which then became a kind of auto-playing cymbal as the chuck of ice propelled itself around its rim. We quickly clunked it into some water.
Eventually we got out the lavender tea pot, given to me by my Aunt Margot during my Reed College days -- the tea pot that served We Three during one of their Portland Tours, the tea pot that kept me from bolting from my Thesis Orals after The Embarrassing Statistics Mistake was discovered, the tea pot that stars in other photos of water vapor coming out of its spout -- filled it with hot water, and plunked a large chunk of dry ice into it.
The resulting blast of white, cloudy vapor was aesthetically satisfying, and provided at least ten minutes of entertainment before the hot water was cooled, and we discovered that the damp table-runner underneath the teapot had crystallized.
More photos here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/
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