Liquid nitrogen is very, very cold. At everyday temperatures, nitrogen is a gas. In fact, most of the air we breathe is nitrogen. It becomes a liquid at a temperature of -320.8 degrees Fahrenheit. In other words, almost 321 degrees below 0!

It is useful to be able to compare this with a substance like water. Water becomes a liquid at 212 degrees Fahrenheit! Water freezes into ice at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. That makes liquid nitrogen 352 degrees Fahrenheit colder than ice! That means that liquid nitrogen is so cold that if you put your finger in it, it would completely freeze.

Liquid nitrogen is very cold, as you know. It is actually 320 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. As you may know there is a temperature (known as absolute zero) which is as cold as anything can get. If we start at the freezing point of water and work towards absolute zero, liquid nitrogen is about three quarters of the way to absolute zero. Very cold!

Liquid nitrogen at standard atmospheric pressure (14.7PSI) boils at 77Kelvin, this is -196 Celsius or -321 Fahrenheit.

You can convert Centigrade to Fahrenheit with the simple formula: F = 32 + 9/5 * C

Nitrogen "boils" at 77 Kelvin degrees, at 1 atmosphere of pressure. The boiling point of a substance is that temperature and pressure at which the substance is changing from a liquid to a gas, or vice versa. So when you pour liquid nitrogen from a Dewar (that's a container with really strong walls that keeps it cold, like a very good thermos) it comes out boiling, because under normal Earth conditions, nitrogen is a gas. 77 Kelvin degrees is equivalent to-196 Celsius degrees, or -320 Fahrenheit degrees.