01-24-2005, 01:48 PM | #1 (permalink) |
Psycho
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Frozen Bottled Water
Last night, I left two bottled waters in my car overnight, in the garage. Mind you, since I'm a clevelander [experiencing temps in single digits, Fahrenheit], the water froze, only some of it.
There were two bottled waters, both from the same manufacteur and same size, one was already about 1/4 empty and the other, was still completely full and had not been opened yet. The one that had already been opened was completely frozen. However, the one that had not been opened yet, the water inside still was not frozen..... I'm a bit bewildered why....I would think that temperature would be able to permeate through the plastic to freeze the water inside, even if it were not open yet. Keyshawn. PS - I just realized - 'bottled water' and 'water bottle' mean two different things, must be hell for those trying to pick up english
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01-24-2005, 01:55 PM | #2 (permalink) |
All hail the Mountain King
Location: Black Mesa
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Is it possible that the bottle that had not been opened yet was under pressure? That may have contributed to it not freezing.
Also, were the bottles right next to each other, certain parts of your car and/or garage may be warmer than others.
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01-24-2005, 01:58 PM | #3 (permalink) | |
Psycho
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The bottles were right next to each other.
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01-24-2005, 01:58 PM | #4 (permalink) |
Sky Piercer
Location: Ireland
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Was it carbonated water or still?
If it was carbonated, it means the inside of the bottle would be under pressure (I think). Water under pressure is more difficult to freeze, so that would explain it. (Don't forget, water expands when frozen). If it was still water...than maybe it was still somewhat more pressurised than the other due to being unopened?
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01-24-2005, 02:06 PM | #5 (permalink) |
Registered User
Location: Right Here
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Compression can cause a slight raise in temperature, and I mean slight. Perhaps the one that wasn't opened didn't freeze because as the water cooled and began to freeze, it expanded, causing a small degree of compression. The slight raise in temperature inside the bottle may been just enough to keep all of its contents from freezing. Outside conditions would have to be perfect for this to happen, i.e. the outside temperature just low enough to freeze it but not so low that it would overpower the slight rise in temp inside the bottle. So I wouldn't expect it to happen very often.
The open bottle would have had more room to expand, so it wouldn't have had any compression. |
01-24-2005, 02:07 PM | #6 (permalink) |
Insane
Location: Houston
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The reason is actually quite simple. The amount of heat required for something to change phases i.e. liquid to gas or liquid to solid depends on a property of the matter called specific heat and its mass.
Note that heat is not actually how hot or cold something is but the actual energy of something so when I say the heat required for something to change phases it can either mean a gain or loss of heat. In the case of freezing water we will be talking about a loss of heat. Now onto the equation: Q = cmdT Q is the variable for heat measured in joules c is the variable for specific heat measured in joules/gram m is the variable for mass measured in grams dT is the quantity of the change in temperature This particular equation does not actually represent the amount of heat needed for matter to change phases. To find that we use another equation and a property called either the Latent Heat of Fusion (liquid changing into water or vice versa) and the Latent Heat of Vaporization (liquid into gas or vice versa). That equation as well depends on the mass of the matter and I can't remember it off the top of my head and my physics book is not handy but its bascially along the same lines as Q = cmdT except it has a new property called the heat of fusion factored in. The basic idea you need to know is that the amount of heat required depends upon its mass. As you can see the amount of heat needed to for something to change phases is directly proportional to its mass. Therefore if you have more some something, in the case a more water in a bottle, it will require a different amount of heat to change phases. In other words, the more water you have, the more energy it will need to lose in order to freeze. |
01-24-2005, 04:02 PM | #8 (permalink) |
Insane
Location: Houston
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To those who thought that the pressure of an unsealed bottle would result in the water not freezing I would like to offer this explanation.
It is true that pressure has a great deal of an impact on what phase matter is in. Extremely low pressure causes liquids to boil rapidly with almost no change in temperature at all. Extreme high pressure can force gases to become liquids like the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen used for rocket fuel. Cooking instructions will tell you lower temperatures for boiling water if you are at higher altitudes. However all of these examples I listed are results of extreme pressure changes. The pressure inside of one of those water bottles would not have that noticable an effect on whether the water would freeze or not. Also, a bottle of water is a fairly expandable container so any pressure "built up" as a result of the ice expanding and causing an increase in the pressure of the fluids in the bottle can be released by the expansion of that bottle. |
01-26-2005, 11:27 AM | #9 (permalink) | |
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Location: Right Here
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01-27-2005, 12:46 AM | #11 (permalink) |
Crazy
Location: San Diego, CA
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It's always good to think of things in extremes just to prove to yourself that something make sense.
What takes longer to freeze in your freezer? A drop of water or a bucket of water? There's your answer.
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01-28-2005, 05:05 AM | #12 (permalink) |
Likes Hats
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
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But the 1/4 bottle was completely frozen while the unopened one was still completely liquid, so I don't think that could be it. I've seen the same thing happen with soda bottles left out in a truck overnight, if there was one that had been opened, no matter how much or little there was in it, they'd be frozen, but the unopened ones still looked okay. Until you opened them, that is, then they'd turn into instant slush. My ChemE friends would say this was because the soda had been 'under-cooled' (not sure of the english term) so that the fluid temperature was below freezing, and when the bubbles started stirring the fluid that triggered the freezing process. Kind of like when you have under-cooled rain, when it hits the ground it instantly turns to ice.
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01-28-2005, 07:19 AM | #13 (permalink) | |
Crazy
Location: Troy, NY
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Don't underestimate the low thermal conductivity of a plastic bottle. Especially since the other one was open. The cold air can get in the open bottle, cool off and freeze the water which in turn heats the air, which rises and escapes the bottle, allowing cooler air to again touch the surface. This movement of heat caused by a flow of molecules (convection) is generally faster than heat transfer by collisions between molecules (conduction). The exception would be convection with a highly insulating material or conduction with a superconductor, and neither of these are part of the scenario.
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01-28-2005, 07:20 AM | #14 (permalink) |
pigglet pigglet
Location: Locash
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Two points :
1. supersix2 is exactly correct, and in addition: 2. due to the smaller volume of liquid in the opened bottle, the temperature gradient is more extreme within the liquid. thus, less time is required to lower the temperature of the smaller volume of liquid, and phase change occurs more rapidly.
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01-28-2005, 07:32 AM | #15 (permalink) | |
Crazy
Location: Troy, NY
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The temperature gradients would look something like this... Imagine taking a rainbow and shaping it into a two-dimentional rectangle (with the longer dimension being height, such that it somewhat resembles a vertical bottle) with rounded corners. The colors would represent the temperature profile. The full bottle would be that rainbow, the other would be one that was 1/4 shorter.
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01-28-2005, 08:03 AM | #16 (permalink) | |
Likes Hats
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
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01-28-2005, 10:12 AM | #17 (permalink) | ||
pigglet pigglet
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While I appreciate the thermal conductivity of plastic, I am guessing that the air in a plastic bottle with a thickness of ~ 1/16 " or less will reach thermal equilibrium with the air on the outside of the bottle if left overnight. I have never conducted the experiment, nor have I performed the calculations, thus I can not state as fact. I do think that a zero-flux gradient at the center of your radial coordinate system and a low-temperature temperature condition on the edge of the circle is less severe than two low-temperature conditions on the end of the longitudinal axis. Of course, there will result a zero-flux condition in the middle of the cylinder as well; either way I agree that the volume (which I believe is related to the thermal mass?) differences will directly affect the rate of cooling and phase change.
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01-28-2005, 08:47 PM | #18 (permalink) | |
Psycho
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Also, NOTE: If it does make a difference [according to C4 Diesel, it may] BOTH of the bottles were tilted at about a 15 degree angle..
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01-28-2005, 09:10 PM | #19 (permalink) |
WaterDog
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lol, frozen water is great, i pulled out afew frozen bottles from my car the other week, i cut the bottles open to get the ice out, and the ice from the one bottle was shaped like a big condom, even with the resvoir tip
but someone took my ice out of the freezer....
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01-28-2005, 09:14 PM | #20 (permalink) |
Insane
Location: Houston
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Look, it doesn't matter where the bottles were in the car, what angle they were at, whether one was open or not, or the conductivity of the plastic. All that matters is the amount of water being frozen.
The equation clearly states that as well as common sense should. As someone above said, "what takes longer to freeze a drop of water or a glass of water." Also think of it this way... I have a hot frying pan on the stove. I have a cup of water and I drip some of the water on the hot frying pan, the water drops instantly boil and evaporate. Now i dump the whole cup of water on the frying pan. What happens now? The water hits the frying pan and sizzles but not all of it is boiled off. Why? Because the frying pan does not have enough heat to energize all of that water into vapor. You can perform both the freezing and the boiling experiments yourself. |
01-29-2005, 11:15 AM | #21 (permalink) |
Likes Hats
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
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And look, what you are talking about are volumes hundreds of times as large as the other, but in this case one was just ~1.3 times as large as the other, which is pretty much no difference at all when we talk about a timespan of several hours. No, I'm guessing the diffused carbon monoxide in the unopened one lowered the freezing temperature just enough so that it wouldn't freeze, like C4 said. If the water was carbonated, that is... keyshawn?
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01-30-2005, 02:28 AM | #23 (permalink) | |
pigglet pigglet
Location: Locash
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Secondly, as a follow up on supersix2 (hate to keep treading on your toes ), but if the time derivative of the temperature roughly scales as the spatial laplacian of temperature, then, then scaling analysis roughly indicates that a difference of one quarter of the volume (with constant radius, this implies one quarter of the height) could be expected to render a difference in temperature change on the order of sixteen times faster, give or take. I would argue that the difference in volume would matter less at longer time scales, not shorter ones. Basically, ten days later they would both be frozen; on shorter time scales, the smaller volume freezes first, which is confirmed by the observation which we are discussing.
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01-30-2005, 08:47 PM | #25 (permalink) | |
Crazy
Location: Troy, NY
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Oh, and sorry for the confusion between the bottle being open and opened. So much for convection. Wait a minute... I believe we're all forgetting something here... Water is a LIQUID!!! Therefore it flows within itself (because of simple molecular motion) which to a great degree evens out whatever temperature gradient may have occured if the mass was solid. This being the case the rate of the temperature (energy) change is based only on the conductivity, thermal mass and surface area / volume ratio. Since the conductivity is constant and the surface area / volume change is not large (small increase?) then the only factor reamining to play a role is the thermal mass. The SA/volume ratio remaining relatively constant idea depends a lot on the shape of the top of the bottle. If it was semicircular (low SA/volume), then I may have to toss this idea out the window since this area of the bottle was the area vacated in the 3/4 full bottle (and yes, a smaller cylander would have a greater SA/V becasue the surface area of the ends does not change). Either way, I would expect the reduction in thermal mass to play a greater role than the increase in SA/vol.
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01-30-2005, 10:40 PM | #26 (permalink) | ||||
pigglet pigglet
Location: Locash
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Either way, it's been fun discussing (I would say arguing, but that term has certain negative connotations that I would prefer to avoid) the subject.
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01-31-2005, 12:22 AM | #27 (permalink) |
Chilled to Perfection
Location: Dallas, TX
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Here's a shot in the dark. Could the impurities in the open bottle be a factor?
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01-31-2005, 08:19 AM | #28 (permalink) |
Chilled to Perfection
Location: Dallas, TX
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OK, get ready to groan, because once again I tried this experiment at home.
Experiments items 3 bottles of .1L (1PT, 0.9FL oz) Ozarka water 1st Opened with 1/2 cup poured out. Lid screwed back on 2nd Opened with no water poured out. Again the lid screwed on 3rd Unopened Placed in freezer at exactly 2:00 am Removed from freezer at exactly 10:00 am Results. All the water in all three bottles were frozen solid. Well. From this I would say that it doesn't matter if the container is open or closed. Or how much water is in it. Placed in a freezer for 8 hours. It all freezes Granted my freezer was colder in the subject's car. So maybe it takes longer for the unopened bottle to freeze. I'll run another experiment tonight to see how long it takes them to freeze
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01-31-2005, 09:00 AM | #29 (permalink) |
Addict
Location: The next town over
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What kind of car was it?
(Sorry to make fun, but I could not resist. Actually, I really enjoyed this tread and the fact that right or wrong, people are thinking about science, and that's great!)
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01-31-2005, 11:00 AM | #30 (permalink) | |
!?!No hay pantalones!?!
Location: Indian-no-place
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01-31-2005, 12:04 PM | #31 (permalink) |
Wehret Den Anfängen!
Location: Ontario, Canada
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Hmm. Lets say the full bottle was 400 ml, and the 3/4 full one 300 ml.
And lets assume they started at 30 degrees C. The 400 ml one would take 12 kCal (30 * 400) to cool down to 0 degrees without freezing. The 300 ml one would take 44 kCal ((30+80) * 300) to freeze completely, and would start icing up after 9 kCal. Nope, no answer there.
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01-31-2005, 02:31 PM | #33 (permalink) | |||
Crazy
Location: Troy, NY
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The way I see it, the actual temperature difference across the plastic will only matter if the water or the air is not considered to be isothermal isothermal (which I believe them both to be). Aside from that, I don't know how the temperature difference would effect the bottles differently Quote:
The heat flux within the cylander being zero is not the case. This would lead to the ouside freezing immediately and then insulating the rest of the mass. What an isothermal situation implies (under an ideal isothermal assumption) would be that the flux within the mass is INFINITE, that is as soon as there is a heat change in the system, the entire system instantly equilibriates itself. Whatever caused the change in heat still has to deal with the heat capacity of the mass, so the temperature of the mass and the environment would not instantly equilibriate, however.
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01-31-2005, 03:57 PM | #35 (permalink) | |
Chilled to Perfection
Location: Dallas, TX
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heh heh, Now that's funny
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01-31-2005, 05:55 PM | #36 (permalink) | |
Crazy
Location: North of the 50th Parallel
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OK I think that all of you have missed the point (but only slightly...)
I live in a northern climate far north of the america border... I see this stuff daily.. In highschool we used to add small stone chips to beakers of water when we were heating them in order to get the water to start boiling at a lower temperature. (The water would actually boil at 212 Degrees just like it was supposed to) The water would form bubbles on the tips of the stone chips and boil before reaching a superheated stage. I remember well when our science teacher showed us how you could Superheat (Heat higher than 212 degrees) distilled water in a perfectly clean beaker. Once it started to boil it would all boil off in a flash and bubble over the top very quickly... it was almost like an explosion. Well... for your information you can also supercool distilled or bottled water to well below 32 degrees F. especially if it is perfectly clean and (ha ha ) and has no backwash from your mouth in it. (hence the difference between the two bottles) I suggest that the water in the unopened bottle was actually supercooled to the degree that the ice crystals had not yet formed. I have seen this: I saw the most amazing thing one winter morning when I left a 5 gallon Jug of Bottled water in my trunk over night. ... I remembered it when I woke up and expected the jug to have burst in my car. I went out to my car and the Jug was completely liquid. but it was still -8 Centigrade. I picked up the jug and carried it in to the house... when I set it on the kitchen table with a thump it spontaneously started to produce crystals in the water... the whole jug turned to ice in about 15 seconds... and the whole family saw it. ... it was spectacular! .. until the top of the jug cracked.... We also have similar problem with fresh water forming ice deep underwater on the structures of our power stations. Because the water moves so quickly through the river it can become super cooled without freezing. It is weird to see large patches of open water when it is -40 outside. But as soon as the water touches the concrete structure of our dams is freezes and can even plug the passageways. This is called frazzle ice and it has hampered our ability to generate power during winter months. Usually we can alleviate the problem with good engineering or by temporarily closing the passage way so the water rebounds to it's normal state... not frozen... Check out this link for more info on frazzle ice or super cooled water. [http://www.undercurrentsonline.com/f...messageid=849] EDIT >>> Sorry... link doesn't work and I don't know why but here is the letter in full... attached below It's been a sl "ice" Quote:
RCALYRA
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01-31-2005, 07:29 PM | #37 (permalink) | |
Crazy
Location: Troy, NY
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Also, supercooling normally does not occur, even in a "clean" water supply. I'm not questioning the added energy requirement necessary to overcome the surface tension which occurs when a particle of a different phase is created, it's just that ordinary water (yes, even distilled water) is normally not that clean. There is already particluate in it which acts as a nucleation center and greatly reduces the surface tension of the new phase. Water that is actually clean is called nanopure water, and we buy it to make buffers which will be used in chemical detection instruments. The jug thing baffles me. The entire contents turned to ice? The enthalpy of fusion of ice is 334 joules per mL (or gram). This is 80 calories. Even assuming that 1/4 of the jug froze and this was enough to break it, that would still mean that the water was at -20*C. ...Oh, and don't think it's not cold here. I'll wake up and it'll be -25*C (-13*F) here, so it's not like I don't know cold.
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C4 to your door, no beef no more... Last edited by C4 Diesel; 01-31-2005 at 07:33 PM.. |
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02-01-2005, 06:05 AM | #38 (permalink) | ||||||
pigglet pigglet
Location: Locash
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q=-k*del(T), and del(T) = 0, then this has certain implications. There will be no flux of heat within the phase, as there is no driving force for transport, as far as I understand it. How the phase responds to change is another issue, as far as I understand it, and nothing in reality approaches the idealized case of the responsive isothermal phase. Quote:
Thank you for your responses. I am enjoying this conversation, and as coolhands stated above, regardless of whether I am correct or you are correct, or it is a melange of viewpoints that is correct, I am simply happy that we can dork out on heat transfer.
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02-01-2005, 07:01 AM | #39 (permalink) |
Chilled to Perfection
Location: Dallas, TX
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OK, experiment #2
Exact same bottles of water (thawed of course) Placed in the same freezer for exactly 3 hours. Results: Although they were not frozen solid, (the centers were still in the liquid state) they all froze to the same extent. No difference at all. Maybe I'm missing something. But so far. I have not found any evidence to support the claim that one could freeze while the other did not unless something was added to promote the freezing. Tonight. I will place them in the freezer for 1 1/2 hours. But I really don't see anything different from what I have been seeing so far.
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02-01-2005, 08:54 AM | #40 (permalink) | |||||
Crazy
Location: Troy, NY
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The heat removal through the plastic is obviously conduction as no mass is flowing through the plastic, but I'm sure you understand that. Quote:
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