Drop water onto a 120 °C pan and it sizzles away fast. On a pan well above 200 °C, the drop skitters and dances for many seconds. Its underside vaporises instantly, forming a cushion of steam that insulates it from the metal. This is the Leidenfrost effect, described in 1756 by a German physician.
Cooled below −183 °C, oxygen turns into a pale blue liquid. Pour it between the poles of a strong magnet and, instead of flowing away, it hangs suspended between them. The reason lies in its unpaired electrons, which respond to the magnetic field. Liquid nitrogen, by contrast, is colourless and pours straight through.
In 2012, Felix Baumgartner jumped from a capsule hanging beneath a balloon, about 39 kilometres up. In that extremely thin air almost nothing slowed him down, and he reached around 1,358 km/h in free fall, or Mach 1.25. He became the first person to exceed the speed of sound with nothing but his own body.