Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/14/you-can-pick-up-a-space-shuttle-thermal-tile-right-out-of-the-furnace.html
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That’s actually pretty amazing
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Always someone that forgets (or doesn’t care) that the flash is on. 
My favorite phone camera (I think it was a Windows Phone), had a feature where it would take a picture before and during the flash, and you could use a slider to tweak how much ‘fill’ lighting would be used. Was perfect for scenarios like this (strongly-contrasted scenes).
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My understanding isn’t so much that it loses heat more quickly, but that it didn’t absorb as much heat in the first place. Combine that with low thermal conductivity and you get that pick it up by the edges trick. Since there wasn’t much heat to dissipate (despite the high temperature) the corners and edges are cooled quickly since they are exposed to more room temperature air per unit volume than the middle of the surfaces.
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When I was a kid, our next door neighbor worked at Rockwell, and his job was to put on those tiles on the shuttle. I might have been easily impressed at 10, but I thought it was a very cool job.
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Meh…
McDonalds French fries cool off faster than that. Oughta tape a mess o’ them to anything that plans to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere…
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Gotta admit, I’m totes outta space shuttle parts now (not yet baking them fresh from excess wind power,) and fries are accessible Kryptonite. I haven’t really figured out Kinscreen for having old ('13?) phones act as the second Zoom atop the laptop screen, so maybe I’ll find a 9H screen protector furnace and stick the product right on the phone?
Huh, Stupid Kiln Tricks turns out to not have direct references. (Also: not 2700 K.)
Just as Trump is not calling his putsch ‘Guns, Germs and Steel.’
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back when I was a junior in HS, 1974/75, my metal shop teacher had a tile and he demonstrated this using our forge. It was neat then and it is still neat today. (I was going to use cool vs neat but thought better of it)
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Love the quote from the tube linked video - “you can pick them up at the corners because they’re only 90 degrees…”
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I was gonna moan about °F vs °C vs K … but after a certain point it really doesn’t matter. 2200 is on the other side of that point.
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Go ahead, tell me it’s safe, that I won’t burn my fingers off. I prefer prudence and survivability. Sure, that one tile might be okay, but how do I know another tile wasn’t substituted before I reached for it? Who can I trust?
“Hey, poke your hand into the blowtorch flame, it’s cool!” or “Sure, you can catch a bullet in your teeth!” Uh huh.
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Or anything heated in a microwave
I remember seeing this demonstrated on TV circa 1980 when the Space Shuttle was an exciting new technology.
I can clearly remember the WOW feeling.
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