Physics on the dancefloor

On Saturday I had the great pleasure of being taken to one of a well presented pair of adjoined clubs called Axis/Radius. My guides had informed that they had a "very powerful smoke machine", I wondered if it was one of these liquid nitrogen fog blowers I've heard about a few times over the past few years. 

It was, and it really is as crazy as it looks:

 

A little Googling led me to discover that the system they have installed is provided by a company called Kryogenifex, a suitably futuristic sounding name for an experience which both appears and feels like it should be happening on a space-ship:

 

A rather pleasant side effect of this kit, especially when you're raving the desert, it does cool things off rather quickly, and that's one hell of an understatement.
I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise knowing that liquid nitrogen boils at 77K (-196C; -321°F)*, but until you're actually in there it hard to describe just what that feels like. After a couple of seconds to enjoy a reprieve from the heat the next sensation is the realisation that you can see nothing. I'd been told that visibility was zero, but I didn't realise it was actually zero; I can see how someone of a vulnerable mindset could become very disorientated by the experience:

I'd like to take a second to point out that during the black periods in that video there is full lighting on in the club, the density of the fog is such that all light is eliminated. Also I apologise for my trusty Flip camera breaking down, but we can't really blame it¹ given the circumstances.

So there you go, if you ever have the opportunity to experience one of these fog cannons I highly recommend you go, and make sure you one the dance floor when they hit. Incidentally you can usually tell when they're about to fire it because (if there's a lull in the music) you can hear the system pressurising as a high frequency hum coming from the ceiling.

Personally I'm extremely satisfied living in a world where we can take our knowledge of physics and utilise it for our own amusement :)



¹ Oh I really do love aliasing, I seem to mention it a lot on here and I think it's an effect that a lot of people observe but never understand, despite it being rather obvious once you know what's going on. 

I just discovered this little .gif on Wikipedia and it perfectly demonstrates the situation I explain to people when discussing the wagon-wheel effect.