Yesterday, I bought a bottle of Canada Dry tonic water and put in the freezer to cool. I took it out 2 hours later and it was in a slushy to frozen in the center state. I opened it to drink it and accidentally squeezed it, causing the liquid to come out. As I attempted to drink this excess I noticed something, it was warm. I don’t mean just warm, but very warm. :eek: Likely the temperature it was when it went in the freezer. Maybe it’s the heat causing me to taste things, but that doesn’t seem possible. Or is it? Could it have been one of the ingredients that separated due to different freezing temperatures? If not, what else?
I guess this really is a mystery!
In order for the center of the liquid to freeze it must get rid of heat. This is principle is used by farmers when a frost is predicted by misting plants with water. For that water to freeze it must give off heat to the plants. Seems odd to be happening in a freezer though. Was it really warm, or just hotter in contrast to the surface of the bottle? Was it fairly warm when it went in the freezer?
It’s possible to trick the human perception of hot and cold - the nerve receptors are sensitive to relative changes in temperature (so cold water will feel warm after touching ice), or just mistake one extreme for the other (a piece of ice touched to the back of the neck feels like a cigarette burn, so I think ice or supercooled water may feel boiling hot, if there is an element of surprise)
I bought it from a chain pharmacy store off the shelf. So, there was A/C there. From there it spent about 15 minutes on the front passenger floor board of my car where the temperature was 103F that day. It was warm to what soda would be if it sat out in the kitchen that day.
I think it’s a combination of Mangetout’s explanantion of sensory confusion enhanced by the contrast of the feel of the bottle in your hand. That’s because there’s no way I could know, and it seems to be a likely explanation.
Missed the edit window:
ETA: Wait, there is another explanation. The contents were already partially frozen at the pharmacy. They’d stuck it in a cooler overnight, it began to freeze, and then it was moved to the shelf. So when you took it out, it was still a little frozen, but the liquid part was still room temperature, possibly warmer from the car ride, and simply in contrast to the feel of the bottle in your hand that felt much warmer than it was. Pretty much the same as I said before but there’s no sensory reversal, it just seemed warmer than it was before.
…and wondrous strange snow