• Question: What kind of modern, such as technological or practical, applications does supercooled water?

    Asked by to Ben, Emily, Hattie, Jemma, Veronica on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ben Butler

      Ben Butler answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Supercooling is a relatively new area that scientists are still exploring. There aren’t many uses for supercooled water really, but other supercooled liquid can be useful. Some clever semi-conductors used in computers are made using supercooled metals.

      One use of supercooled materials that you might have used before is those hand warmers that you warm up and turn solid when you click the button in the middle of them. This is a supercooled solution of sodium acetate. When you press the button it creates enough disturbance to make the solution freeze!

    • Photo: Jemma Rowlandson

      Jemma Rowlandson answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Hey there!

      Supercooled water is just water that has been cooled down to below it’s freezing point, but without it turning into ice so it stays liquid. The only applications I can think of for supercooled water are in nature. Clouds are made of supercooled water droplets, you also get it in glaciers.

      There’s lots of other things we can supercool though which are very useful. The chemical in instant hand warmers for example is supercooled. When you snap the little bit of metal inside them this causes the chemical to react and form crystals almost instantly, producing heat.

      You can actually make supercooled water at home. The water has to be pure, so buy a bottle of mineral water from the shop. Either stick it in your freezer or submerge it in a bowl of ice and water, with a little salt. This will cool your bottle to below zero degrees, it might take a while so be patient.

      Once your water has been in for an hour or so it will be super cooled. You can then take your bottle out and bang it on a table, the extra energy will cause the supercooled water to turn to ice instantly!

    • Photo: Emily Hayward

      Emily Hayward answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      I agree with the above answers – Jemmas examples of supercooled water in Nature are the best examples currently but who knows what it may be used for in a few years! Currently lots of research is being done into supercooled carbon dioxide…..thats where most of the research focus is rather than supercooled water as it has a lot of really fun, new properties when supercooled and scientists have found lots of uses for it 🙂

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