Greetings Scientists and welcome to my first experiment!! Today I am going to explain, what is supercooling? I’ll show you a couple of experiments that you can try at home as well.
First off, supercooling can be defined as a state where liquids go below their freezing point, but do not become a solid. How this is possible? Ever since elementary school we learned about the three states of matter; solids, liquids, and gases. Once water reaches it’s freezing point it should be a solid. This still puzzles scientists, but there are real life examples of this every day. For instance, the water in the clouds often times are in a state of supercooling. You can preform a short lab to watch this phenomenon right before your eyes.
Supplies: Some unopened purified water bottles, ice cubes, clear drinking glass, bowl
Instructions: Place the unopened bottles of purified water in the freezer away from any other items and set a timer for 2 hours and 15 minutes. Put in several of water bottles to ensure that you get the results you want. Just before the timer rings, set up the bowl and glass on a working surface that you wouldn’t mind getting a little wet. Place an ice cube in the bowl. When the timer rings, carefully grab one water bottle out of the freezer. Open the cap extremely slowly to ensure that the water doesn’t freeze from moving too quickly. Slowly pour some water on top of the ice cube and observe.
The next experiment that you can do is with the drinking glass. Carefully open one of the other water bottles and pour super slowly in the glass (tip the glass to the slide so the water can glide down to the bottom of the glass). Once the glass is almost full you can stop pouring. Take a smart chunk of ice and hold with your fingers. Place the ice chunk in the water and observe. Here is a video of the experiment.