I notice when held upside down and sprayed, the cans of air eject a below 0 degree liquid.
My question is, if you were to throw an entire can into a body of water and shoot it with a gun, would it explode into a big ice block?
-wondering…
Hm…you know, that question made me laugh…although, now that I think about it…I don’t know.
I would say no though…
Probably not, although the explosive decompression would cause a very large temperature drop. Certainly some ice could be formed, though. It would mostly form on the remnants of the can and in the immediate vicinity, mostly isolated ice chips and such.
You’d form a little frost, but very little actual ice.
The problem here is that liquids have this property called latent heat of fusion. This is the amount of heat that must be removed from a volume of water at zero degrees C (freezing point) before it actually changes phase from liquid to solid. Conversely, this heat must be added to ice at 0 C in order for it to actually melt.
Water’s latent heat of fusion is fairly large. This is why you can ski on a sunny winter day, or why ponds and lakes take some time to freeze over and melt in the winter and spring, respectively.
It’s also why you can go outdoors on a subzero day and breathe without freezing your sinues, and expose your face to the cold air without getting frostbite and frozen eyeballs. Heck, you couldn’t even eat ice cream without getting frostbite on your tongue.