Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Supercooling Experiment 4


Water seems like a pretty unremarkable thing but it has a lot of weird properties that we tend to take for granted because it’s around us all the time.  For example, solid ice floats on liquid water.  That seems normal because we see it every time we have a glass of ice water, but most solids don’t do that.  They sink right to the bottom.
Besides that, there are actually many types of ice,  although only 2 are naturally found on earth.  Speaking of planets, there are places on Mars where pressures and temperatures are just right to reach the triple point for water.  At its triple point, water can exist as ice, liquid water and water vapor all at the same time.
All of that stuff is just something to think about, though, since I doubt any of us will be making a trip to Mars any time soon.  There is a really cool thing that can be done with water here on earth, and that’s supercooling.
You need uncontaminated, distilled water, like what you might find in most bottled water.  Then it’s a simple matter of making its temperature drop below freezing (32 F, 0 C).  As long as there’s nothing to allow crystals to get a grip on and begin turning into ice (which is why the distilled water is important), and as long as it’s not badly disturbed (like a whack against the side), it will remain liquid despite its temperature.  Once you introduce either a contaminant or a shock to create bubbles, it will instantly begin a chain reaction turning the supercool water into a frozen slush.

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