2016-07-22
35 分钟Hello, and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish,
a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden.
My name is Dan Schreiber, and I am sitting here with Anna Czazinski, James Harkin, and Andrew Hunchamari.
And once again, we have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days,
and in no particular order, here we go, starting with you, Andy.
My fact is that a group of scientists is currently making their own lava.
Pretty cool.
So there's a load of scientists who are at the University of Buffalo's Centre for Geohazard Studies,
and they want to study what it's like when lava and water meet,
because it's something that you don't get to study a lot in the wild, in the natural world.
But it's really important as well, because when lava and water meet,
it gets really, really explosive, as opposed to only normal lava explosivity.
And so they are making their own stuff,
and they melt 10 gallons of basaltic rock at a time in a furnace at 2,500 degrees.
Is there not a thing about water and lava meeting, which is related to the Leidenfrost effects,
one of James' favorite effects, which is when two substances of vastly different temperatures meet each other,
and it means that the water isn't caused to boil straight away
because this layer of gas suddenly forms between the water and the lava.
And I think that might be what makes it so explosive, because this layer of gas forms,
and then eventually that layer of gas collapses, and then this massive explosion happens.