I fetched a fresh bottle of sparkling water from the garage, which unsurprisingly was Very Cold Indeed. Lucky the bottle hadn't frozen, I thought. So, I brought it inside, opened it, and was slightly startled when the entire contents then froze solid, over about 30 seconds!
I recall stuff about phase diagrams and triple points from my schooldays, and realise that the freezing point of water changes according to the pressure it's under, but don't think I've ever seen this happen in practice like this. I'm intrigued - what's the pressure in a bottle of fizz, and how much would it alter the freezing point? I wonder how narrow a range of temperature this behaviour would occur?
(And yes, I've just removed my ale stash from the garage for safety's sake!)
We were ther over new year, and left some bottlas of bubbly, and some regular white wine, out on the chalet balcony to keep cold.
The outside temp was somewhere between -10 and -15, and the still wine was a slush puppy.
But the sparkling wine was still liquid. Bring it inside, pop the cork, ( thus dropping the pressure ) and pour it. The stuff begins to crystalise in the glass before my eyes. Then, I see the contents of the bottle are crystalising fast, and the bottle begins to fizz over furiously.
The company we were staying with had only taken possesion of the chalet from the owner / leasing agent a few hours before we arrived. The chalet host was a young girl, fairly good at cooking, but un-skilled in electrical matters.
Part way through cooking dinner, *bang*, all power off.
My brother and I go to the distribution board, and find the incoming
500mA RCD tripped. Re-set. *bang* trips straight back out. So off with all the final circuit MCBs. Incoming RCD re-sets OK. Bring them back on one-by-one, till we find the faulting circuit. A 32A radial to the hob.
Hob is stuffed.
We discover that if you leave the hob off for a while, the fault will clear, and you can bring the circuit up again. But after another 5 mins use, it will trip out again.
We tell the girl the hob is stuffed, and she needs to contact her manager. She does, and their in-resort handyman comes around and pokes about and agrees the hob is stuffed. Escalates to chalet owner / leasing agent, who sends round a local french electrician.
He comes in with a *very* dismissive attitude, turns on the rings, and is shrugging his shoulders "c'est bon, idiots". Within 30 seconds of entering the place, he's on his mobile, indicating no trouble found. It takes me and my brother some effort to get him to 'attend cinq minutes', and during that time he stands twiddling the hob knobs.
Almighty flash from under the control knobs and a great bang, and we're in darkness again. His mobile ( he was still on the call )was thrown upwards from his hand and landed on the tiled floor with a crash, much to our amusement.
Once he'd replaced the battery in the phone, the next call was somewhat more contrite: "oui, c'est tres dangeraus..." and he tootled off and got a temporary plug-in 2 ring hob.
I once had the professional pleasure of playing with a triple point cell - necessary for calibrating a very accurate digital thermometer which seemingly used a crystal as the sensing element.
Having said that, and admitting that school and university physics were effectively 50 years ago, my initial reaction was that this was supercooling. Does pressure influence water freezing to that degree - it certainly didn't when I left some bottles of home brew in the boot one New Year and was left with brown icicles and a lot of broken glass.
Quite possibly the fizz was cooled below the normal freezing point, but didn't have anything obvious for the ice crystals to form around. Once there were lots of lovely bubbles then the ice crystals formed like magic all over the place.
Possibly also a solution of carbon dioxide may lower the freezing point in the same way that a solution of salt does. When the carbon dioxide comes out of solution then the liquid freezes.
There you go - two explanations for the price of one ;-)
...and depressurising may also lower the temperature of the liquid (a very small amount), in the same way a refrigerator works.
This used to happen to me regularly some years ago when I lived for a while in the Tropics. The ubiquitous drink there was a fizzy lager type beer which had to be drunk cold. I often used to put a few bottles in the ice compartment of the fridge. If I left them too long they would cool to about
-2ºC and when taken out they'd appear quite liquid. When poured into a glass they would instantly crystallise forming a kind of frozen liquid sludge.
I believe the phenomenon is called supercooling. The same thing happens sometimes with falling rain-drops - they freeze when they strike the ground, coating everything with ice.
I am a chalet host (or rather my wife is - I'm the ski bum ;-) ) and I often give impromptu physics lessons based on evidence such as this!
Cold As a newbie chalet host I soon realised that 'honesty bar' beer needed to come in at night to save the tops popping and becoming unsaleable, and if you timed the cooling of tonic just right you got a slushy for the G+T negating the need for ice :-)
Early on we discovered that the ?1 fizz used for Kir Royale would uncork itself once at the near ideal temperature so putting the bottles out at
5 minute intervals and then using the un-popped ones to make guests drinks - the popped one was fine for staff obviously...
Air Pressure (lack of)
Makes boiling eggs a black art - at 1850m it is roughly 6mins in boiling water for a 'dippy egg', at 1570m only 4.5mins but then the variability of egg size comes into play and that is the area I excel in
- just as well as a a ski host I ski like a girl...
Cakes are not the same at altitude and a Victoria Sponge will one minute be a triumph of 'light and fluffy' and the next be a biscuit
- best stick to yogurt cake mixes.
Thin Air
Makes you knackered - I am by some accounts a bit of a 'bloater' but having been in resort for a month+ I am 'match fit' so don't be too upset when I can carry your kit and talk whilst walking to the lift.
Oxygen levels are still same percentage as sea-level but the molecules are further apart, altitude sickness affects some people at 2200m and has made my wife quite ill at 3500m - I spotted she was 'ill' and said we needed to drop lower to make her feel better, but she declared she was quite happy to 'stay here and die' - we had been higher earlier in the week but maybe the air pressure had changed or it was colder or something but it certainly was a bit worrying.
Humidity (Lack of)
Gives you a sore throat on first night, a combination of too much free wine leads to lying on your back snoring is probably the main cause though ;-) Nose bleeds from nasal linings drying out is a regular event at altitudes above 1600m too.
Thin Air (rumoured)
Gives you bad dreams - anything over about 1600m gives vivid and often lucid dreams and it probably is an oxygen starvation effect but is only very brief in most low resorts - stay in Val Thorens at 3250m and you will have bad dreams (and a sore throat and nose bleeds virtually guaranteed!) The snow is nice there but it is pig ugly and exposed...
The freezing point of carbonic acid is -78C so the CO2 dissolved in the fizz is a dilute carbonic acid. as it is still liquid when the pressure is released the CO2 escapes leaving a more dilute solution which is then below its freezing point. As it then is a supercooled liquid it freezes.
I know. I spent three years in Johannesburg (about that altitude) and the whole trip seemed like a bad dream..or was it the whole dream seemed like a bad trip..well anyway I'll get my coat..
I reckon it's a combination of the pressure preventing the liquid from freezing then, when you crack the cap, the gases boil off and a combination of adiabatic cooling and latent heat of vaporisation takes enough energy out of the liquid to freeze it very quickly.
You make dry ice by cracking the valve on a bottle of liquid CO2. Some of the liquid turns to gas and the latent heat required to do so causes some of the liquid to freeze.
I would suggest you have two effects going on here. The supercooling effect allowed by the elevated pressure in the bottle allows the liquid to be chilled below its normal freezing point without a state change. When you de-pressurise, the co2 bubbles then immediately act as nucleation points that allow the crystallisation process to begin and ice to form.
it takes four times the energy to freeze ice as to change the temp of water by 20C.. this means that it would be possible to have water freeze in that way if it was at -20C.. However the alcohol in wine acts as an antifreeze and there may not be enough energy difference to cause it to freeze solid. I will leave the maths to the reader to see if its possible with a 12% alcohol mix.
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