Mar 16, 2025 01:03 AM
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1076989
INTRO: Have you ever left a bottle of liquid in the freezer, only to find it cracked or shattered? To save you from tedious freezer cleanups, researchers at the University of Amsterdam have investigated why this happens, and how to prevent it. They discovered that while the liquid is freezing, pockets of liquid can get trapped inside the ice. When these pockets eventually freeze, the sudden expansion creates extreme pressure – enough to break glass.
“Newton had an apple fall on his head. I found my freezer full of broken glass,” jokes Menno Demmenie, first author of the new study that was recently published in Scientific Reports.
He continues, more seriously: “The usual explanation for frost damage is that water expands when it freezes, but this does not explain why half-filled bottles also burst in our freezers. Our work addresses how ice can break a bottle even when it has plenty of space to expand into.”
To understand this process, the researchers used a special dye, methylene blue, to track freezing in open cylindrical glass containers. The dye easily dissolves in water and turns it blue. The dye becomes transparent when the water freezes, as it gets pushed out of the ice crystals. This allows the researchers to see exactly when and where ice forms.
Having filmed tens of samples of blue-dyed water freezing in a –30 °C environment, the researchers cracked the case. Ice breaks glass when the top surface of the water – the one open to air – freezes first. The rest of the water naturally freezes from the outside in, creating a pocket of liquid water surrounded by ice on all sides. When this pocket freezes too, it exerts an extreme amount of pressure on its surroundings, in many cases enough to break glass.
The researchers estimate the pressure exerted by the ice in their experiments to be around 260 megapascals, enough to dent high-strength steel and four times as much as their glass vials can withstand... (MORE - details, no ads)
INTRO: Have you ever left a bottle of liquid in the freezer, only to find it cracked or shattered? To save you from tedious freezer cleanups, researchers at the University of Amsterdam have investigated why this happens, and how to prevent it. They discovered that while the liquid is freezing, pockets of liquid can get trapped inside the ice. When these pockets eventually freeze, the sudden expansion creates extreme pressure – enough to break glass.
“Newton had an apple fall on his head. I found my freezer full of broken glass,” jokes Menno Demmenie, first author of the new study that was recently published in Scientific Reports.
He continues, more seriously: “The usual explanation for frost damage is that water expands when it freezes, but this does not explain why half-filled bottles also burst in our freezers. Our work addresses how ice can break a bottle even when it has plenty of space to expand into.”
To understand this process, the researchers used a special dye, methylene blue, to track freezing in open cylindrical glass containers. The dye easily dissolves in water and turns it blue. The dye becomes transparent when the water freezes, as it gets pushed out of the ice crystals. This allows the researchers to see exactly when and where ice forms.
Having filmed tens of samples of blue-dyed water freezing in a –30 °C environment, the researchers cracked the case. Ice breaks glass when the top surface of the water – the one open to air – freezes first. The rest of the water naturally freezes from the outside in, creating a pocket of liquid water surrounded by ice on all sides. When this pocket freezes too, it exerts an extreme amount of pressure on its surroundings, in many cases enough to break glass.
The researchers estimate the pressure exerted by the ice in their experiments to be around 260 megapascals, enough to dent high-strength steel and four times as much as their glass vials can withstand... (MORE - details, no ads)