Originally posted by Da Tinker
Another easy lock solution: liquid nitrogen. Should be available locally, just take a cheap insulated jug along to carry it in. Break out your eye protection, pour liquid nitrogen over lock to freeze it, and render the metal brittle, whack with hammer, watch lock shatter.
That'll work in theory, but it ain't real practical. You can't just carry liquid nitro in a thermos after all. The -70 fridge in my wife's lab broke a while back and the whole gang was running around like crazy to scrounge up dry ice before the DNA went bad.
I mean, think about freshman physics (and right now I can't get out of my head this goofy deal that everyone who had freshman physics at Chicago for thirty years must've hear) where you piss off the LA pouring the stuff over your partner's head or making pens shatter or whatever. It boils in like five or ten seconds. To actually get case hardened steel brittle enough to shatter you'd hafta imerse the spot in question longer than that. Seems kinda unlikely, plus nobody can point to an actual case of this happening, which is a sure sign of an urban legend.
Not like it matters,
Bill