Fake Snow? -- Internet Hoax

reply to post by bringmecoffee


I think so too. If you hold a light at a certain angle, the way it is in the demos it blackens the surface. Like when you try to light a candle, that's down too low in a glass holder, the glass blackens.

The only demo I can do is the bic lighter on an ice cube and it melts.

Surely if this was fake snow, others would have noticed when chunks of it get walked into a warm home, it just sits there not melting into puddles?

As others have said, snow does behave differently to how you expect it to.
Why none of those people just put it in a pan, heated it up and saw if it melted is beyond me. That would prove it was snow quite nicely I'd have thought. As would eating it.

To add a bit though:

1. Packed snow will have a lower surface area for the flame to melt, so it will take more time to do so. It will also be denser, so it will need more energy to heat it up as well. Lighters aren't really made to heat things up, though that blowtorch like burner in one of those videos will.

2. Snow can absorb water, and as such as it melts it just gets absorbed by the snowball, result, it looks like none of it is melting.

3. Snow is a lot less dense than water is, if you put a litre of snow (strange way to measure a solid, isn't it?) and melt it, you'll probably get about 100ml of water from it. Which is a pain if you're melting snow to make a cup of coffee.

reply to post by apex


I agree, and can confirm, that to be the case. A little while back in nov 2013 I was in Arizona, there was snow in the flag staff area and I was visiting friends. We had a fire pit going outside and the kids where packing snow onto sticks and pretending to roast marsh mellows. The snow, to their amazement, it turned black and shrunk sometimes, which made them that much more excited because it acted like an actual marsh mellow.


The only thing really suspect in the report is the 'smell' that many people are claiming. I did not experience any 'plastic' smell.

Snow melts just like snow should in Davenport, Iowa.

reply to post by Sly1one


Put this to the test. Here's what I came up with:

i'm in Atlanta and i just gave this a shot...

Sure enough the exact same thing as the woman in the video from Atlanta happens. But if you just hold the snow in your hand it melts like normal. The smell is similar to burning plastic, but i'm pretty sure it's just the lighter.

I tried a piece of ice from my freezer and it blackens in a similar way but just drips off - it's just crap from the lighter.

Nothing to see here.

Dagobahmonk
reply to post by Sly1one

 

Put this to the test. Here's what I came up with:

edit on 30-1-2014 by Dagobahmonk because: Video wasn't displaying properly...

Video isn't working!

Dagobahmonk
reply to post by Sly1one

 

Put this to the test. Here's what I came up with:

edit on 30-1-2014 by Dagobahmonk because: Video wasn't displaying properly...

Fixed for ya

Ok i went and tried this. It did the exact same thing, and i could smell something like when you burn plastic.
I got the snow sample from the yard not the road or driveway.
it is pretty strange, but i also have never thought to put a lighter to snow before, so who knows.

reply to post by Grimpachi


this is GREAT! thanks for the video!

reply to post by Sly1one


Snow? What's that?

It's gonna 36degC today (96.8degF)....we don't get snow...even in Winter (I lie....we very very very rarely get it in the local hills)

I'm just shocked at how many people say that this is completely normal. Soot from a lighter, really?

Did someone just randomly become curious about snow in the year 2014? Or perhaps, just perhaps.... there is actually something different about the snow in 2014, that people have noticed and are now telling the world, hey, theres something different with the snow this year.

But don't question it, it's normal, move along.

xxshadowfaxx
I'm just shocked at how many people say that this is completely normal. Soot from a lighter, really?

Lighters burn hydrocarbon fuel - that's hydrocarbon - so yeah, you get soot from lighters!

Did someone just randomly become curious about snow in the year 2014? Or perhaps, just perhaps.... there is actually something different about the snow in 2014, that people have noticed and are now telling the world, hey, theres something different with the snow this year.

But don't question it, it's normal, move along.

Except of course lots of people have questioned it - and by doing so have found out that yes, it is normal.

Questioning is good - as is noting what the answers to the questions are.

Saying hat it must be bad for no more reason than you haven't seen it before or you want to believe it isn't true is stupid.

bringmecoffee
Well, I just tried it. I'm in NW Ohio, by the way. It did just what the video showed. I packed into a snowball and burnt it with a lighter. No melting that i could tell. Turned black and stunk like chemical. Not sure how or why, perhaps that posted info about thermodynamics is correct. I don't know enough about it to explain it, just that I burnt a snowball and it turned black.

You should try to smoke it...

reply to post by Sly1one


I live an hour outside of Cleveland and the snow does the same thing here. It has to do with the moisture in the snow. Out west your snow is much drier than ours is over here. Thats why Aspens got such great skiing and Pennsylvania, well... not really too renowned for it, are we?

Anyway, not fake snow. The governments got more important things to do than make fake snow.

I wasn't denying that lighters have carbon... However, snow is ice, and ice turns into water. Which means, snow does not turn black when exposed to heat, it either evaporates, or it melts into a puddle. You don't see charred snow... The snow would melt instantly when exposed to a flame. Yet in none of the videos, do we see it melting or dripping. We instead, see it turn black. It is not caused from the lighter, simply because, the snow would melt long before soot would appear. It may be in the water, but it wouldn't be on the snow itself.

Hey all:

We just tried burning snow with a lighter like in the first video. We met the same results. But after burning the snow the area had a really odd smell. Thought it might have been the lighter fluid and smelled the lighter. The lighter had no smell but the area of the snow I used the lighter on smell unnatural almost a chemical small to it. To note, in a glob the snow seemed not to really produce water droplets but lighting a small piece that broke off I got water.

I have never tried to burn snow before so this might be normal I have no Idea. I would not think the smell would be a naturally common with burning snow.

~Morpheus

reply to post by Sly1one


You can boil water in a paper cup because water is a good conductor of heat. I suspect this is what we are witnessing here, it has something to do with the density and thermal conductivity of the snow. Also the reason he doesn't see water when he is using a blowtorch is because the snow is probably going right to steam because of the high flame temperature. Probably if you tried this five or ten or fifty years ago you would see the exact same results. I

xxshadowfaxx
I wasn't denying that lighters have carbon... However, snow is ice, and ice turns into water. Which means, snow does not turn black when exposed to heat, it either evaporates, or it melts into a puddle. You don't see charred snow... The snow would melt instantly when exposed to a flame. Yet in none of the videos, do we see it melting or dripping. We instead, see it turn black. It is not caused from the lighter, simply because, the snow would melt long before soot would appear. It may be in the water, but it wouldn't be on the snow itself.

It is not charred snow - it is carbon deposits caused by the snow cooling eth flame before combustion is complete.

and snow actually absorbs a lot of its own melt and forms slush - snow is mostly air space, and the melted snow will be "soaked up" in those air spaces in exactly the same way a sponge soaks up water.

you can do the experiments yourself if you have any snow around - or check for some of the corollaries with ice if you do not like these folk have.

I live in Colorado, I can tell you the winter snow oack supports the water needs for all of Colorado and many neighboring states. If little to no water value is in that snow...were in serious trouble. If that pack is at 80%, we go on serious water restrictions. What is the value of this "snow"?!