Supercooled Water Freezes

This is a news story, published by Quanta Magazine, that relates primarily to Pseudomonas news.

environmental science news

For more environmental science news, you can click here:

more environmental science news

Quanta Magazine news

For more news from Quanta Magazine, you can click here:

more news from Quanta Magazine

About the Otherweb

Otherweb, Inc is a public benefit corporation, dedicated to improving the quality of news people consume. We are non-partisan, junk-free, and ad-free. We use artificial intelligence (AI) to remove junk from your news feed, and allow you to select the best science news, business news, entertainment news, and much more. If you like environmental science news, you might also like this article about

ice nucleation

. We are dedicated to bringing you the highest-quality news, junk-free and ad-free, about your favorite topics. Please come every day to read the latest nucleating ice news, ice nucleates news, environmental science news, and other high-quality news about any topic that interests you. We are working hard to create the best news aggregator on the web, and to put you in control of your news feed - whether you choose to read the latest news through our website, our news app, or our daily newsletter - all free!

temperature ice forms

Quanta Magazine

•

The Enduring Mystery of How Water Freezes | Quanta Magazine

Summary

Nutrition label

85% Informative

Ice nucleation is so slow for pure water at zero degrees that it might as well not happen at all.

In nature, impurities provide surfaces for nucleation, and these impurities can drastically change how quickly and at what temperature ice forms.

Chemists can’t reliably predict the effect of a given impurity or surface to hinder or promote ice formation.

The best known ice nucleator is a bacterium called Pseudomonas syringae, which has a protein that can force water to freeze at around minus 2 degrees Celsius .

Bores of a certain size confine water molecules in a way that helps ice form, too.

Bumps and divots on a surface can squeeze water molecules into configurations that make it easier for ice to form.

VR Score

Informative language

Neutral language

Article tone

informal

Language

English

Language complexity

Offensive language

not offensive