Comments on: How to: Instantly turn water into snow

By: tnmc

tnmc — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 10:17:00 +0000

Yeah, as if insulting me is going to make me change my mind that gratuitous vulgarity isn’t humorous. And you haven’t seen the movie, have you?

By: MrJM

MrJM — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 00:47:00 +0000

Fuck Yeah Humorless Turds!

By: Over the River

Over the River — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 00:40:00 +0000

I was speaking from a broader perspective, thanks.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 21:38:00 +0000

How do you do conversions in your head without that?

By: ocker3

ocker3 — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:40:00 +0000

I wonder if there’s also a common temperature with C, F and K?

By: ocker3

ocker3 — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:38:00 +0000

I wonder if 1L of boiling water is more pure H20 than 1L of regular tap water, thus leading to a more efficient freezing process?

By: ocker3

ocker3 — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 20:38:00 +0000

Strawman. We’re talking about room temperature water vs boiling water, the parameters of the experiment are very specific.

By: sota767

sota767 — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 15:53:00 +0000

-40C is the same as -40F. Didn’t know that.

By: UnderachievingSheep

UnderachievingSheep — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 13:23:00 +0000

it’s a common Tumblr meme. Almost any topic imaginable has a “Fuck yeah” tumblr devoted to documenting it. Here’s a sort of directory of Fuck Yeah tumblrs.

http://fuckyeahdirectory.tumblr.com/

By: spacedmonkey

spacedmonkey — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 11:56:00 +0000

It makes me really happy that there’s a blog called “Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics.”

By: tnmc

tnmc — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 09:43:00 +0000

Seriously? ”Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics”? Are we living in Idiocracy already?

By: Phanatic

Phanatic — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 04:25:00 +0000

The explanation completely neglects evaporative cooling, which is significant. All else being equal, water at 100C is evaporating much faster than water at 20C, which means it’s cooling much faster, faster still than a simple calculation based solely on temperature differential and conductive cooling would indicate.

By: Over the River

Over the River — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 04:21:00 +0000

Interesting point, thanks. I should have added a 1L size for each and stated freeze means all 1L = 0°C. (all 1L remaining)

I do agree hot water looses its heat quicker, but (in my example) the hot water has to loose 99.99999°C and the cold only .00001°C.

The link provided above looks to support the argument with a specific set of parameters. Theories don’t work that way. Thanks for your comment.

By: C.J. Hayes

C.J. Hayes — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 02:09:00 +0000

The way I understand it, in practical situations, is that if you put cold water in a freezer, you will get a nearly equal amount of ice in a given amount of time. But if you put the same amount of boiling (or near-boiling) water in a freezer, you will get a smaller amount of ice in a shorter amount of time.

I haven’t done any experiments or anything. But it makes sense to the analytical me, which has observed that dishes rinsed in very hot water air-dry faster. The droplets evaporate more quickly exposed to room-temperature air. Ergo, very hot water placed in a freezer will evaporate quickly, leaving the rest of the liquid free to freeze faster.

I’m not arguing the science that says that cold water will reach higher temperatures more quickly than hot water will, just that the evidence pointing at hot water exhibiting a solid state more quickly still makes sense.

By: C.J. Hayes

C.J. Hayes — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 02:00:00 +0000

Sorry, are the bottles filtered, or is the water? I have problems with syntax sometimes.

By: oasisob1

oasisob1 — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 23:58:00 +0000

In Spain, I tried the reverse – throwing a bucket of ice in the air on a really hot day. Results were very different.

By: Jack Daniel

Jack Daniel — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 23:23:00 +0000

Does not work in Florida.

By: Over the River

Over the River — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:57:00 +0000

As a friend once said “argue in the extreme”

When placed into a -200°C environment, water at .00001°C which is cold, but not freezing, will freeze faster than water at 99.99999°C which is hot. Therefore hot water will not freeze before cold water.

Remember to disprove a theory one only needs one instance where the theory can be disproved.

By: Guysmiley

Guysmiley — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:18:00 +0000

I can confirm this works in air temps as “warm” as -28F (-33 C), I’ve done it before multiple times.

By: Bob Karpowicz

Bob Karpowicz — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:08:00 +0000

Back in the Nineties, I was staying in Downtown Minneapolis with a minus Forty degree night outside. Our hotel was across the street from a local TV station. My room was directly across from the rooftop set where the weatherman was demonstrating how cold it was by pulling a pitcher of boiling water from a microwave and tossing the contents into the air to make a mini-blizzard of instant snow. It was beautiful and awesome (and damned cold, too.)

By: Amorette Allison

Amorette Allison — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:05:00 +0000

Montanan checking in on tossing boiling water out on a cold day. Good times, until your mom discovers the back steps are now coated with ice.

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:00:00 +0000

You did read that paragraph in the link you provided, eh? From what I’ve parsed, it hasn’t been shown.

Me, I want to ask René Descartes just how those particles were bending.

Edited to add: If you watch the video, you’ll notice that most of the water actually hit the ground. What water did freeze, actually produced ice fog, rather than snow.

If you want expertise on turning water to some form of snow, visit your local ski slope or talk to some pseudomonas syringae.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowmaking
Bonus: ski resorts usually use water pulled from a local river or lake – nearly freezing cold – to make the snow.

By: squeeziecat

squeeziecat — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 20:05:00 +0000

in Soviet Russia, snow throws you.

By: Cameron Brown

Cameron Brown — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 19:52:00 +0000

Despite the fact that it doesn’t really make sense, it has been shown that hot water freezes faster than cold water.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect

By: jetfx

jetfx — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 19:45:00 +0000

I’ve done this several times in Calgary, Alberta when it gets down to -40 C. It never fails to be fun.

By: Josh Ruhnke

Josh Ruhnke — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 19:45:00 +0000

I have done this in an ice house out on Lake of the Woods. It is pretty cool.

By: theophrastvs

theophrastvs — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 18:37:00 +0000

surely there is also some dispersive advantage to starting out with hot water (unrelated to eventual phase change), lowered surface tension, some portion already in vapor phase, larger micro-phlogistonal N-ray heat transfer Fermi surface interface (“God made the bulk, but the devil created the surface”), surely? (“that’s already discussed in the article you @#$! and stop calling me Shirley”)

By: xzzy

xzzy — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 18:29:00 +0000

I wanna see someone compare the crystals formed from this, compared to natural snowflakes.

My only party trick involving freezing things is putting filtered water bottles in a snowbank overnight. Can do it in a freezer too, but snow is always more fun.. they seem to have a roughly 1 in 5 chance of not developing crystals, so when you pick it up and shake it a little bit the whole bottle will quickly turn into ice. Not solid ice though, it’s a pleasant slush.