Can we put our hands in a pan of boiling oil without burns?

Many people believe that only those with supernatural abilities will be able to dip their hands in boiling oil without burning.

Can you dip your hand in a pan of boiling oil without burns?

Recently, netizens are sharing the story of Prem Kumar (65) - a chef in New Delhi, India with special talent. Accordingly, he possesses the ability to make viewers have to look at their hearts: use their hands to immerse them in a pan of boiling oil to fry fish.

But looking back and forth, Mr. Kumar is just like a normal person. So do you have . superpower or immersion in a pan of boiling oil is not as dangerous as we think?

Dip hands in a pan of boiling oil - impossible task?

In fact, immersing yourself in hot water above 60 degrees Celsius is likely to burn us. Therefore, the immersion of liquids with higher boiling temperatures such as boiling oil (about 200 degrees Celsius) is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.

However, we can still "peacefully" when dipping our hands into boiling oil, just like Mr. Pumar's case. The answer lies in a physical phenomenon, named "Leidenfrost effect".

Leidenfrost is a phenomenon that occurs when a liquid comes into contact with a surface that is much larger than its boiling temperature. At this point, a part of the liquid will evaporate, forming a thin insulating layer. You can observe this in the picture below, when embedding a red heated steel ball into water.

This insulation will slow down the evaporation of liquids. In particular, the evaporation rate is now slower than when the liquid comes into contact with the surface with an approaching temperature of its boiling temperature.

Drops of water falling into a hot pan (200 degrees C) evaporate very slowly, which can even be suspended due to the insulating steam layer below.

Applying this principle, by simply immersing our hands in water, we can even immerse them in . liquid lead - with boiling temperatures of about 450 degrees Celsius as the following experiment.

The first is melting lead .

Put your hands in the water . do it quickly.

The water when exposed to the surface has too high temperatures (here is liquid lead) will form an insulating layer, helping our hands unscathed.

You can take a closer look at the possibility of . dipping your hands into liquid lead through the video below.

And vice versa, we can also immerse our hands in liquid nitrogen without getting cold burns . At this time, our hands have a much higher temperature than the boiling temperature of Nitrogen (only about -196 degrees C).

At this time liquid nitrogen will change the role of water - forming an insulating gas layer, which helps us to be safe and sound (of course only for a very short time).

* Note: All of the above experiments are particularly dangerous, you absolutely DO NOT DO.