Schrodinger's Dog said:
Don't forget he's doing this in front of the judge so foul play would be detected, it's unlikely anyones going to care much if he puts his hands in the snow or secrets some snow. Everyone'll be assuming it's as hot as it is normally.
Heh, if the judge can change his mind about the whole thing, I'd wager he wouldn't stand for the guy dumping handfulls of snow in there!
Schrodinger's Dog said:
If his hands start of cooler than body temp and if he waits only a minute before putting his hands in it should actually already be much less than 72 degrees C(anyone know how quickly water at 72 degrees C would cool at say -10 degrees C, say it's a moderate sized mountain for the area: 20,000 feet?
Well, he can't wait to put his hands into the boiling water-- at least not the way it's worded. He has to put his hands into water that's boiling. How hot the water is *after* he puts his hands in isn't stipulated, although I'm sure the judge's assumption upon agreeing to the challenge is that the water would stay boiling for several minutes (which is why I think he probably wouldn't accept dumping snow in).
Not sure how quickly it would cool down though at extremely low outside temperatures. We'd need to know how much water there was, and what sort of container it was kept in (a metal pot would cool faster than, say, a ceramic one). Again, you can perform extra cheats that the judge wouldn't take kindly too-- like having an extremely small metal pot which you immediately set into the snow, cooling it faster.
Schrodinger's Dog said:
Considering the atmosphere is very thin very cold and most probably way below zero, I'd say it's possible, even likely that it would work, the person who posed the question in the first place probably got the idea from a real life event.
Well, there's also other cheats that might make it possible, like plunging your hand (while clutching a snowball) into a very small pot, displacing the majority of the boiling water onto the ground, and replacing it with the snow, which speeds the cool-down process.
The thing that I'm thinking isn't possible without injury is:
- Pot has about a gallon-or-so of water in it
- Water in the pot is boiling (72+C)
- Man puts both hands in, holding fist-sized snowballs in each hand
- Nothing else is added to the pot
- No water is displaced when he puts his hands in
- Nobody puts the pot into snow (or whatnot) after he submerges
Maybe there's other things I should stipulate, too, I dunno.
There's also another important caveat to the problem. If it IS based in real events, who's to say what "injury" is? 1st degree burns aren't permanant. I could believe that he could handle the above situation and only manage a 1st degree burn-- provided that there's no heat source under the water keeping it boiling. And a 1st degree burn, while painful, isn't permanent. And again, if it IS based on a real event, it may be exaggerated. The deal may have been if they man could *tolerate* his hands being submerged in boiling water without removing them.
DaveE