Water below freezing

[haloman]

I was watching Nova a few weeks ago about hidden lakes, and they mentioned water below freezing I had herd about it before but never really understood what happens to make it that cold, could you explain it to me?

[Buffy]

You mean "unfrozen water"? Any sort of impurity will lower water's freezing temperature (that's the idea behind anti-freeze in your car's radiator). Its also possible to lower the temperature of water below freezing if there is absolutely no vibration whatsoever (with a very interesting "instant freezing" effect when you jar it), but this is usually only possible under lab conditions.

 

Getting the temperature below the freezing point of water is easy and is accomplished through weather! See "Minnesota" or "Siberia"...

 

Brrrrrrrrrrr,

Buffy

[InfiniteNow]

I was watching Nova a few weeks ago about hidden lakes, and they mentioned water below freezing I had herd about it before but never really understood what happens to make it that cold, could you explain it to me?

Well, simple really. When water goes below freezing, it turns to ice. :evil:

 

Just kidding. It's sounds like you are referring to supercooled water, whereby a fluid is cooled below it's freezing point but it remains liquid.

 

I see it as akin to cleanliness. The fluid needs a speck of dust or particle on which to start growing the ice crystals (or seed crystals). If that speck were not there, then the crystal would have nothing from which to build and the fluid would simply continue cooling.

 

The following demo is pretty straight forward:

 

Supercooled Water Demonstration

 

 

Cheers. :cup: