June 23, 2016 at 02:57AM

Today I Learned: 1) http://ift.tt/1Ssn3OR 2) Mid-evening, when the sun is still up but it has cooled down a bit, seems to be a good time for finding bees, butterflies, flies, and other flying insects (at least on a Summer day in California). 3) Dry ice manufacture is a fascinating process. You start with liquid CO2 under very high pressure. You release the liquid CO2 into a relatively closed (but not airtight) space. The drop in pressure causes the liquid CO2 to instantly boil off. The boiling process absorbs a ton of energy, so the whole assembly flash-cools down to below -80 C, which is about the freezing point of CO2. This causes the CO2, which was just sublimed off of a liquid, to solidify. About 50% of the liquid CO2 will go into solid form, with the rest escaping into the air. You can, technically (BUT PROBABLY YOU DON'T WANT TO DO THIS UNLESS YOU REALLY KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING) do this yourself with a CO2 fire extinguisher. Basically you just release the CO2 into a pillowcase, and you get a bunch of CO2 snow. This is pretty dangerous, as you're dealing with very high pressures and very cold temperatures in close proximity to your body. I don't recommend it. But I *do* recommend you check out youtube videos of it and marvel at how well it works.