What will you get if you freeze water?

Some readers may recall a science class in which an excitable teacher walked to the front of the class to show off a small, cracked steel container, seemingly damaged by an incredibly powerful, but tiny force; only for said teacher to reveal that the damage had been done by nothing more than water. However, what would happen if you put the water in a container it couldn't break out of and then froze it? We currently know of 15 different "solid phases" of water, aka ice, with each type being distinct due to differing density and internal structure. The form you're likely most familiar with is Hexagonal Ice which is what happens when water freezes normally under regular conditions. If you keep lowering the temperature of Hexagonal ice, it eventually becomes Cubic Ice; tweak the temperature and pressure further and you can create Ice II, Ice III all the way up to Ice XV. Due to the inherent difficulty of producing such high/low pressures and temperatures, it has taken science up until as recently as 2009 to fully document every known form of ice. The majority of ice's final forms were discovered in part by a group of researchers in the Chemistry department of Oxford University who were able to create Ice XII, XIV and XV for the first time. In the case of Ice XV, creating it involved taking Ice VI and slamming the temperature down to -143 degrees Celsius before exposing it to pressure 10,000 times greater than the Earth's own atmosphere. This final form of ice, and by extensio...

Water crystallizes into ice at 32 degrees Fahrenheit most of the time, but not always. Courtesy of Flickr user The title of this post would seem an appropriate question for an elementary-school science exam, but the answer is far more complicated than it first appears. We’ve all been taught that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, 0 degrees Celsius, 273.15 Kelvin. That’s not always the case, though. Scientists have found liquid water as cold as -40 degrees F in clouds and even cooled water down to -42 degrees F in the lab. How low could they go? That turns out to be a tricky problem to answer. When liquid water is cooled below -42 degrees F, it crystallizes into ice too quickly for scientists to measure the temperature of the liquid. So Emily Moore and Valeria Molinero of the University of Utah developed a sophisticated computer simulation of 32,768 water molecules (fewer molecules than can be found in a raindrop) that let them see what happened to the water’s heat capacity, density and compressibility as it supercooled and determine what happened as 4,000 of those molecules froze. Their results appear in the journal Nature. As the temperature of the water approaches -55 degrees F, the water molecules form tetrahedrons, with each molecule loosely bonding to four other molecules. The density of the water decreases, its heat capacity increases and its compressibility increases. “The change in structure of water controls the rate at which ice forms,” Molinero This ( HT:

HOUSTON – Water leaks from broken pipes during the state’s big freeze caused big bills for thousands of City of Houston customers. If you have already received a big bill for water usage during the time of the freeze, You should pay the amount on your previous water bill that was more in line with your normal usage. When you receive your April bill, Houston Public Works says you will notice an adjustment. You will be charged either the average of your last 12 months of bills or what you were billed for in February, whichever is less. If your bill is set to be automatically drafted from your bank account, you will want to go on the city’s website and put a pause on the auto-draft so the higher amount is not drafted. If you fail to do that and the full higher amount is deducted from your bank account, once your bill is adjusted in April, you will have a credit on your account that reflects the overpayment. If you live in a single-family residence, you don’t have to do anything to get the adjustment. Public Works says its software will flag accounts with abnormally high usage over the week of the big freeze. If you live in an apartment or other multi-family home, you need to apply for the rate adjustment on the If you have any other questions about your bill, call Customer Account Services at 713.371.1400. Copyright 2021 by KPRC Click2Houston - All rights reserved.

Say you have completely rigid, undeformable* container that you completely fill with water (no air pockets!), and then cool it to well below freezing. What happens? Can the water turn into ice if it hasn’t any room to expand? Bonus question: is there any limit to the “strength” of a freezing liquid’s expanding properties? For example, if I were to pump water under a skyscraper and freeze the water, would it be capable of lifting the skyscraper (assuming I properly constrain its sides to prevent outward expansion)? *May or may not be a word. Squeeze it hard enough, and you can prevent it from freezing. I had a bottle of beer that I put in the freezer to cool down, and when I took it out some time (~1 hour) later, it was very very cold, but still liquid. As soon as I popped the top and relieved the pressure, the beer in the bottle turned to slush over the course of the next twenty seconds or so (a clear bottle, so you could watch the whole thing happen). I suspect the colder you make the water, the more pressure you need to apply to prevent freezing. I remember a series of still shots where a thick-walled cast-iron vessel was filled with water, sealed, and placed in a pile of dry ice. At some point the vessel shattered. Did I mention that it had thick walls? Cuz it did. Musta been a lot of pressure from the water trying to expand to make that thing crack. If you keep lowering the temperature, all of the water will eventually freeze. When the water reaches 0 °C [in the perfec...

The freezing point or melting point of water is the temperature at which water changes phase from a liquid to a solid or vice versa. The freezing point describes the liquid to solid transition while the melting point is the temperature at which water goes from a solid (ice) to liquid water. In theory, the two temperatures would be the same, but liquids can be supercooled beyond their freezing points so that they don't solidify until well below freezing point. Ordinarily, the freezing point of water and melting point is 0 °C or 32 °F. The temperature may be lower if supercooling occurs or if there are impurities present in the water which could cause freezing point depression to occur. Under certain conditions, water may remain a liquid as cold as -40 to -42°F! How can water remain a liquid so far below its usual freezing point? The answer is that water needs a seed crystal or other small particle (nucleus) on which to form crystals. While dust or impurities normally offer a nucleus, very pure water won't crystallize until the structure of liquid water molecules approaches that of solid ice. Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.D. "What Is the Freezing Point of Water?" ThoughtCo, Aug. 28, 2020, thoughtco.com/the-freezing-point-of-water-609418. Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.D. (2020, August 28). What Is the Freezing Point of Water? Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/the-freezing-point-of-water-609418 Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.D. "What Is the Freezing Point of Water?" ThoughtCo....

We put this question to Ewen Kellar. Ewen - This is an interesting property of how gases interact with water because as water gets colder, it can dissolve more gas in it which is kind of the opposite to what you normally think when you're trying to dissolve sugar in water, where you've got to get warmer water to get more sugar in or more salt in. If we take a fizzy drink for example, where you've got carbon dioxide dissolved, when you actually have a litre bottle of such a drink, it actually contains about 6 grams of carbon dioxide which is about 3 litres if you were to let it out into the atmosphere. Chris - That's about as many grams of sugar as there are dissolved in those fizzy drinks as well, isn't it? Ewen - Yeah. Chris - A slightly different concept, but... Ewen - Yeah, absolutely. So basically, you can pack all that carbon dioxide into the water. Although, you generally need a bit of pressure to do it because that's why the carbon dioxide wants to keep coming out after when you undo the cap. But what happens is, when the water then starts to freeze, all the spaces, the cavities between the water molecules all start to disappear because the water molecules start orienting themselves, start to crystallise. And that basically starts kicking the gas out of the liquid and it generally starts to form tiny little gas bubbles and you'll see this in your ice tray. In a bottle of fizzy pop, if it's a plastic bottle, then there's no problem because what happens is, all that g...

Most articles about physics don’t need to start with a disclaimer, but this one does. Please — for the sake of your well-being, reputation and the U.S. healthcare system — really want your buddy Instagramming what you’re about to do. As a polar vortex brought subzero temperatures to much of the Central U.S. on Wednesday, Midwesterners have once again embraced a cherished internet-era tradition of throwing boiling water in the freezing air and posting videos of the results — a spectacular white cloud — on social media. It’s the Arctic version of trying to fry eggs on car hoods during heat waves. Provided you don’t hurt yourself or others near you (like dozens of people did last time it got this cold), the boiling water trick is nice a do-it-yourself physics experiment that can be a useful lesson about the properties of heat and water. The Times talked to a couple of physicists about what’s really happening. Is the water freezing midair? “A lot of people say boiling water freezes immediately, but that’s not what’s happening,” said Jeff Terry, a professor of physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. “It’s not an instantaneous freezing of the water.” In a video he tweeted Wednesday, Terry threw a pot of boiling water into minus-14 degree air, creating a big white cloud that drifted away, with dozens of small contrails streaking toward the ground. The big cloud is condensate, or water that has quickly condensed into tiny droplets, which is the same reason you ...

Water can exist as a solid (ice), liquid (water) or gas (vapour or gas). Adding heat can cause ice (a solid) to melt to form water (a liquid). Removing heat causes water (a liquid) to freeze to form ice (a solid). When water changes to a solid or a gas, we say it changes to a different state of matter. Even though the water’s physical form changes, its molecules stay the same. Water is a molecule A molecule is a group of two or more atoms that bond or ‘stick’ together. Water is a molecule. It is made up of two hydrogen (H) atoms and one oxygen (O) atom that are chemically bonded together. The H and O are symbols for the atoms that make up water. This is why people often refer to water as H 2O. Water can change from a liquid to a solid or a gas and back to a liquid, but its molecules always stay the same. A water molecule is always H 2O whether it is liquid water, ice or water vapour. Numerous everyday words, like energy, have a different meaning in science. We talk about running out of energy during a race or children having too much energy. Scientists define energy as the potential to do work – such as heating or cooling water to make it change state. Changing states of matter and energy Water, like all other types of matter, requires the addition or removal of energy to change states. A block of ice is solid water. When heat (a form of energy) is added, the ice melts into liquid water. It has reached its melting point – 0°C. Continue to apply heat, and the water will tur...

Louis - Let’s think about it. You probably know that if you take something (anything) and cut it up into almost the smallest parts you can, you get what’s called molecules. Everything in the world is made up of these little tiny molecules, and each molecule weighs a certain amount. In a liquid (like water), the molecules are sort of stuck together, but they can slosh around a lot. When you freeze it and turn it into a solid (like ice), you slow all of the little molecules down, and they get stuck together really tightly so they can’t move. But all the same atoms are still there...they’re just moving more slowly. So the water will still weigh the same amount when it’s frozen, since it still has all of the same molecules that it started off with. -Tamara (published on 10/22/2007) When warm water mixes in the ocean with cold water, the warm water rises and the cold water sinks. This is because it is denser than the cold water, correct? If that is true the total volume (or amount of space) that the water takes up, when cold, has been reduced. Therefore, wouldn't a gallon of 92 degree water take up less space than a 32 degree portion of water even though it has the same number of molecules? - Russell Geary (age 31) Atlanta, GA. USA I got a little lost in trying to follow which way you were thinking the density change went. Hot water is less dense than cold water. The same number of molecules take up more room when they're hot. Just near the freezing point the pattern reverses, ...

Living on the Gulf Coast, many of us are practically experts at storm prep. While we have heard of the usual storm prep suggestions, including getting your We asked what some of you are doing to prepare for a potential storm and a few really unique and helpful ideas came up. A lot of people are suggesting others to freeze water bottles - and lots of them. Why should you freeze water bottles? Freezing water bottles will help keep your food cool longer during a power outage. The frozen water in bottles will keep the freezer cool longer. Depending on how “Freeze a lot and pack your fridges and freezer tight with stuff. The more packed it is, the less room there is for warmer air to start circulating, keeping it cool longer. We usually consolidate our inside and outside freezers and just use the extra one for freezing more ice for ice chests,” suggests Houston resident Bobbie Byrd. Fill zip-top bags full of water and freeze them If you don’t have any water bottles, you can fill up zip-top bags and use those in your freezer. This is also a good option if you don’t have a lot of space for water bottles. “I fill gallon freezer bags with water and freeze them flat. It makes a large chunk of ice that works well too,” recommended Jennifer Sisco. Just make sure to lay the zip-top bag filled with water flat in the freezer so it freezes in a flat square shape. Once frozen, you could put these around food to keep it cool. You could also fill up empty milk jugs with water. Essentially, i...