whenever i put a few hard boiled eggs in a bowl of water and place it in the fridge to store, a disc of ice will form the next day. i take it out, then another disc forms. just wondering why that is?
Your refrigerator is too cold.
have you tried just filling up a same size bowl with plain water, and seeing if it does the same thing?
It sounds like your eggs have a coating of some ice nucleating protein
There doesn’t seem to be a good online review of the effects of proteins on ice nucleation, but here’s a few tidbits:
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~kmuldrew/cryo_course/cryo_chap12_2.html
Why do you feel you need to store your hard-boiled eggs in water? They are perfectly fine just sitting there in their shells, or under plastic wrap if peeled.
i keep them in water so i can peel them all at once after i first cook them. saves me time in the morning.
also i trying to refrigerate non-egg water, to see if it’s the temp 
That would still require the fridge temp to be below freezing, correct?
Yup, but not much below freezing.
But it would still imply that the fridge temp is too low.
If you place them in just the right part of the fridge, the bowl may be getting a direct blast of cold air. Even if the box as a whole is set at properly fridgey temperatures the direct vent may be enough to freeze items in its path.
[SIZE=“3”]**Place a Reliable THERMOMETER in the fridge!
Capice?**[/SIZE]
Nitpick, you’ll get a much better reading by placing a cup or bottle of water in the fridge for several hours or overnight and taking then putting thermometer in the water. If you just put a thermometer in the fridge it’ll give you a bad reading. When you open the door and warm air rushes in the thermometer will start rising. The water temp won’t swing as quickly.
In our fridge, you can take advantage of the “blast of air” effect to make super iced coffee out of leftover coffeemaker coffee. Just enough ice forms at the top of the carafe to kind of pleasantly “condense” the coffee. Add sweetener and half-&-half to taste
Does coffee have the right stuff, protein-wise, to foster ice nucleation (as explained in **Squink’s **post)?
i will get a thermometer this weekend, but for what it’s worth, the bowl of “eggless” water did not freeze, and there’s never been any indication that the fridge has been too cold otherwise; my leafy greens never frost, my juice, milk, etc, never ices, and the dial on the fridge is set half way. also on any glass material (jars), there’s never been a hint of ice. and there’s no strong current in the fridge.
anyways, i invite any fellow Dopers to try this phenomenon out.
What kind of thermometer are you using that gives you such instantaneous feedback? Sure, that’s technically correct, but in the time it takes you to open the door and read your thermometer, it’s not going to differ much from the closed-door temp, if at all.
The second bowl had too much water, the eggs displace some of it.
The one I use, when put into water (we keep water bottles in our coolers to check the temp) will go from room temp to water temp in about 10 seconds. They start reacting within, I’d say, about a half a second of putting them in the water. If you look at supermarket coolers, along the top you’ll usually see a thermometer. The probe goes up through the top of the case to the area where the airflow is. If you look hard enough, you’ll notice that on some newer ones, the probe is in a vial of liquid (I assume salt water so that it can read temps below freezing). I assume it’s for the same reason, so that even if there is a burst of warm air, it’s gives a better reading.
As for what kind of thermometer, it’s just a standard probe thermometer. Similar to this one
http://www.shopfosters.com/store/files/images/large/d_877.jpg
that doesn’t really make any sense… if the water’s volume is the only factor, overnight would be more than enough time to make the difference negligible…
Interesting. I guess I just have those electronic thermometers, and it takes a lot longer for them to react, in my experience. When I’m barbecuing something, to get from grate temps of 200F to actual ambient temp takes about a good thirty seconds to a minute.
But what’s really important here isn’t how long it takes the thermometer to get to the new temp, but how long they take to start moving. If the OP’s fridge is running at 32 to degrees, by the time he get’s it open and digs out the thermometer it could* be at 35 and he might think everything is fine (on the same token, it could go from 35 to 40 and he might turn it down).
*I say could, becuase, you’re right, it’s probably not going to happen, but it could happen. Also, I’m used to doing this in my small grocery store cooler. However unlikely it maybe, if it does happen it could result in losing quite a bit of product if I end up freezing or warming the entire case.