As Halloween parties and haunted houses come to life today, one chilling element will continue to steal the show — dry ice.

Can you melt dry ice? At normal air pressure, solid CO2 skips the liquid phase and turns directly into a gas (sublimation). But what happens when you introduce extreme pressure?

Dry ice is solid carbon dioxide (CO2), sublimating directly from solid to gas, while liquid nitrogen is elemental nitrogen (N2) in a liquid state, vaporizing into gas at room temperature Dry ice has a ...