The Leidenfrost effect is a phenomenon in which a liquid, in near contact with a mass significantly hotter than the liquid's boiling point, produces an insulating vapor layer keeping that liquid from boiling rapidly.
This is most commonly seen when cooking; one sprinkles drops of water in a pan to gauge its temperature: if the pan's temperature is at or above the Leidenfrost point, the water skitters across the pan and takes longer to evaporate than in a pan below the temperature of the Leidenfrost point (but still above boiling temperature).
The effect is also responsible for the ability of liquid nitrogen to skitter across floors. It has also been used in some potentially dangerous demonstrations, such as dipping a wet finger in molten lead or blowing out a mouthful of liquid nitrogen, both enacted without injury to the demonstrator.
The latter is potentially lethal, particularly should one accidentally swallow the liquid nitrogen.
It is named after Johann Gottlob Leidenfrost, who discussed it in A Tract About Some Qualities of Common Water in 1796.
The effect can be seen as drops of water are sprinkled onto a pan at various times as it heats up.
Initially, as the temperature of the pan is below 100 °C (212 °F), the water just flattens out and slowly evaporates.
As the temperature of the pan goes above 100 °C (212 °F), the water drops hiss when touching the pan and evaporate quickly.
Later, as the temperature exceeds the Leidenfrost point, the Leidenfrost effect comes into play. On contact with the pan, the water droplets bunch up into small balls of water and skitter around, lasting much longer than when the temperature of the pan was lower.
This effect works until a much higher temperature causes any further drops of water to evaporate too quickly to cause this effect.
This is because at temperatures above the Leidenfrost point, the bottom part of the water droplet vaporizes immediately on contact with the hot plate.
The resulting gas suspends the rest of the water droplet just above it, preventing any further direct contact between the liquid water and the hot plate.
As steam has much poorer thermal conductivity, further heat transfer between the pan and the droplet is slowed down dramatically.
This also results in the drop being able to skid around the pan on the layer of gas just under it.
