[brusch64]

Can you please elaborate why gloves are bad ?

I've never handled liquid nitrogen, but everytime I've seen someone handle it they wore gloves like these:

https://www.2spi.com/category/cryo-gloves/

[friendzis]

Gloves are not inherently bad, but the risks they do not protect from are not obvious. For the sake of this comment room temperature is 0 heat, cold is negative heat (offset scale).

Gloves are not a perfect insulator, therefore they absorb heat and cold. It takes time for the cold to permeate the gloves - i.e. you observe significant temperature gradient over thickness of the glove. By the time your hand feels the cold, the whole width of the glove is bloody cold. In order to remove the cold from the glove you need to heat it. The only heat source is your hand inside of the glove, therefore the heat is taken from your hand. You need as much heat from your hand as much cold you have taken from LN to bring the gloves to 0. Unless you remove the gloves when the cold starts to permeate - hello frostbite.

While Leidenfrost effect allows one to splash LN on their hands without any or at least significant damage, gloves simply allow more splashes, not full immersion. Handling LN with gloves is a delaying technique, gloves do not magically protect from cold.

[dreamcompiler]

It's sort of similar with very hot things. I'm a blacksmith, and I rarely wear gloves. Steel is a poor conductor of heat, so if you grab it just a few inches away from the red-hot end you're fine. If you hold it too close, you realize it instantly and let go before any serious damage happens. But if you wear cotton gloves for a while, you'll grab the steel closer to the heat without realizing how hot it is, and then the accumulated sweat inside the glove suddenly vaporizes, and you get a nasty steam burn before you can get the glove off.

[Retric]

This depends on how insulated they are. You could make gloves that allowed you to stick your hand in -200C all day long. It's the same reason winter coats work, slow heat loss below the body's heat protection and you get unlimited duration.

The problem is most gloves are designed for vastly warmer temperatures and you don't notice frostbite if your hand cools down slowly.

[tjoff]

I don't doubt that you are right. But that whole description could, to my inexperienced ears, just as well be an argument as to why you really really should be wearing gloves at all times.

If the gloves slow down the process enough so that when you feel cold you have time to put down the container and remove the gloves (less than five seconds?). I mean, to me I'd imagine that is the sole purpose to wear them in the first place?

It would, I imagine, also help from panic. If you notice that you got LN on your gloves there is less panic than getting it on your skin - less chance of a reflex reaction that just makes things worse.

[brusch64]

Thank you - this makes perfect sense !

[tptacek]

In addition to my sibling comment, the practical risk is that instead of splashes skittering across your skin (probably harmlessly), gloves present an opportunity for LN to get trapped up against your skin, where it will most certainly burn you.

[boobsbr]

Perhaps because of the Leidenfrost effect? LN would evaporate before, or very briefly during, contact with skin, creating a cushion of air under the droplet, making it just roll away and avoid freezing of the skin.

Maythe the LN would "stick" to the gloves, freeze them, and then freeze the skin?

[thunfischbrot]

Proper long cryo gloves are fine. It's what you are supposed to use. The issue you are mitigating with the gloves is mostly that you may inadvertently touch surfaces which are extremely cold, freezing your skin itself or freezing it to the surface. Due to the Leidenfrost effect one is rather safe from touching LN directly unless it is for more than a couple of seconds.