Live on BBC One: Tomorrow’s World put Liquid Ice under a thermal camera

Tomorrow’s World was the BBC’s long-running show for new science and technology, broadcast live. On 1 May 2002 it opened “live from the BBC’s Television Centre”, and Liquid Ice was one of the evening’s new ideas.

The presenter was Roger Black, the Olympic medallist who went on to present for the BBC. With him in the studio: Mark Bender, a physiotherapist who worked with top athletes such as Tim Henman, and a 400-metre runner. Bender took a bandage straight out of its vacuum-sealed pack and wrapped the runner’s ankle.

On air they explained how it works: inside the bandage is a liquid with alcohol and other cooling agents, and once the pack is open, they start to evaporate. When it dries, you soak the bandage again and reuse it.

Twenty minutes later, the thermal camera

At the end of the show they took the bandage off and pointed a thermal imaging camera at both legs. On screen the area under the bandage showed up blue, cooler than the other leg. Bender’s verdict, live on BBC One: “The main thing is that it’s so mobile. You know, you can put that in a bag, take it with whoever you want to.”

The same liquid, 24 years on

What the BBC filmed was evaporation at work: a liquid of water, alcohol, menthol and camphor that evaporates off fabric and takes heat from the skin with it. It needs no freezer or ice box. That is still Liquid Ice. Since then an independent lab has measured it as well: 5.8 °C cooler skin under the soaked bandage.

The bandage from the show lives on as the Self Cooling Bandage to soak yourself, and as the pre-soaked Active Ice Bandage that comes ready out of its pack.

We can’t show you the footage, because it belongs to the BBC. We still have the recording in our archive.