The paper describes four demonstrations, suitable for a large lecture hall, of the Leidenfrost phenomenon. The demonstrations show the floating of liquid drops on their own vapor above a hot surface, the delayed quenching of red-hot brass by water, the explosion of vessels containing suspended liquid droplets, and the momentary incombustibility of living tissue immersed in boiling oil. The paper also contains some history of the study of phenomenon, and suggests that it should, in fairness to Boerhaave’s prior description, be renamed the Boerhaave-Leidenfrost phenomenon.
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F. L. Curzon (1978) studied this question.