supercooling
Sign in to savethumb|Supercooled water, still in liquid state thumb|Start of solidification as a result of leaving the state of rest Supercooling, also known as undercooling, is the process of lowering the temperature of a liquid below its freezing point without it becoming a solid. Per the established international definition, supercooling means "cooling a substance below the normal freezing point without solidification". While it can be achieved by different physical means, the postponed solidification is most often due to the absence of seed crystals or nuclei around which a crystal structure can form. Th
Article
10 sectionsContents
- Explanation
- Constitutional supercooling
- In animals
- In plants
- In seawater
- Applications
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|Supercooled water, still in liquid state thumb|Start of solidification as a result of leaving the state of rest Supercooling, also known as undercooling, is the process of lowering the temperature of a liquid below its freezing point without it becoming a solid. Per the established international definition, supercooling means "cooling a substance below the normal freezing point without solidification". While it can be achieved by different physical means, the postponed solidification is most often due to the absence of seed crystals or nuclei around which a crystal structure can form. The supercooling of water can be achieved without any special techniques other than chemical demineralization, down to . Supercooled water can occur naturally, for example in the atmosphere, animals or plants.
This phenomenon was first described in 1724 by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, while developing the Fahrenheit scale.