A few days ago, I noticed that a 500ml water bottle in the fridge was frozen. I assumed that my mom had frozen it and then put it in the fridge overnight so she could drink it on the way to work the next day. Well, the next morning I noticed it was still in the fridge. And that it was still frozen. I thought that was a little odd, but paid no attention, figuring that since the temperature was probably only a few degrees above freezing, it would take awhile for the water bottle to fully thaw out. Not so, I found out this afternoon when I saw that it was still frozen. Solid. So I called up my mom, and asked her how long the bottle had been in the fridge.
“About a month.”
“No, I mean the frozen one.”
“Uh, what frozen one?”
Turns out she’d put a bottle of water in there about a month ago, and sometime in between it managed to get frozen solid. So I decided to put a small tupperware container full of water in there to see if it would freeze. After about 7 hours in the same location, it’s shown no signs of freezing.
The only thing I could think of different is that the bottled water is purified, and perhaps some impurities in the tap water have lowered the freezing temp. It should also be noted that the bottled water is on the middle shelf, pretty much as close to the center of the fridge as anything else, and things on the outer edges are unfrozen. Granted, there’s no pure other water in the fridge, so it could be that the whole thing is at 0 degrees C, and we jus thaven’t noticed before.
So now to my actual question: Does anyone have any hypotheses about what’s causing the water to freeze more readily than anything else in the fridge?
Also, I’ll check back tomorrow to see if the small container of water I put in is frozen, and keep you updated.
I had a somewhat opposite experience a couple of weeks ago. I bought a 1 liter bottle of water at the store and put it unopened into the freezer at work. This was on a Friday afternoon.
When I came to work on Monday, I took the bottle out of the freezer and it was still liquid. But as soon as I opened the cap of the bottle, the water instantly froze solid. To say that I was surprised would be an understatement.
FBG, that probably had something to do with the pressure inside of the bottle, or something. Which makes me wonder if my phenomena has anything to do with pressure. Perhaps some physics geeks shall drop by with some more solid ideas.
FatBaldGuy, you probably saw an example of a supercooled liquid that was below freezing poing. It didn’t freeze because the purity gave it nothing to start forming crystals against. Once you distirbed it and crystals formed the whole thing froze. Pretty neat. This is very much like the hot water in the microwave that doesn’t boil until the cupt is moved.
Sorry, Electronic Chaos, I didn’t intend to hijack you thread. How about it, experts? Anyone know why the bottle of water would freeze in the fridge, without being next to the wall of the freezer compartment?
Was it in the back, near the top? This happens at my parents’ house too. My brother and I drank alot of Propel water this summer and since my dad likes to keep that kind of item on the top shelf in the back, we had alot of frozen Propel.
WAG - Different parts of your fridge are different temperatures to keep the temperature generally the same throughout. Think about a heating vent in a room. The thermostat is not next to the heating vent (for a reason). So in order to keep the area of the room where the thermostat IS at, the air coming out of the heating vent has to be hotter than the temp specified by the thermostat. If you stant next to the heating vent, you’ll be a little warmer than if you stand next to the thermostat.
In your fridge, the temp in the back has to be a little colder than in the front to keep the front cool. Otherwise, stuff in the front would get pretty warm every time you opened the door. I believe, at least in my parents’ fridge, that in the back at the top is where the fans are and that’s the coldest spot in the fridge. So if you keep something like a bottle of water up there (which has no salt in it as opposed to alot of other items in your fridge), it’s likely to get frozen if the temp right in that spot dips to 32 degrees, and stay frozen because it’s in a nice cool, insulated place.
This is just a non-scientific guess, tho. And I am groggy.
Just want to add that my parents’ fridge is a bottom-freezer fridge. So putting the water at the top in the back is putting it as far away from the freezer as possible.