What would your friends say, on a hot summers day, if you could open up a bottle of water
and pour out an instant snow cone? In this project we're exploring some tips, some tricks,
and everything else you'll need to know, to master the art of making instant ice.
In a previous video, we turned water like this, directly to ice in just an instant.
For this project you'll just need some purified water, and the easiest place to find that
is in a water bottle. Go ahead and throw about 6 bottles in the freezer, because the more
bottles you start with, the better chances you're gonna have for success. The temperature
dial in my freezer was set to 5 of 7, and that settled to a temperature of -24ºC or
around -11ºF. Now, these bottles have been sitting at room temperature overnight, and
in my experience this trick works best if they're evenly spaced, and placed on their
sides. The minute the door closes, make a note of the time. After an hour and a half,
check your bottles to see if any of them have frozen. If they're all still liquid, then
quickly close the door, but keep checking on them every 15 minutes. For these particular
bottles, it took 2 hours and 45 minutes for the first one to freeze. Looking at the bottle,
you can see it's not frozen solid, but you should see flakes of ice floating around under
the plastic. At this point, stop and take note of the time. Then subtract 15 minutes,
and now you have a supercooling formula for your favorite brand of water. In my case,
this trick works from 2-1/2 hours to 2 hours and 45 minutes. Now if the bottles in the
freezer, haven't frozen yet, take them out very gently. This water is well below freezing,
but hasn't frozen yet because there aren't any impurities to get it started. The water
does want to freeze, and that's why something as simple as a jolt to the side can be enough
to nucleate the ice formation, and just like magic, you've got instant ice. You'll notice
that bottles this cold will develop a layer of condensation making it harder to see inside,
so go ahead and wipe that off. This way, when you hit it, you'll have a much better view
of the crystal formations. Another way to start your water freezing, is to use a piece
of ice. Put the ice anywhere you want, and then pour your water overtop. You should see
it freeze instantly, and build quickly into instant ice sculptures like these. I put an
ice cube on this rock, and you can see the crystals build every time the water makes
contact with the ice. You could make this easier by using a whole bowl of ice. Now if
you start pouring your water, and it doesn't look like it's building pillars very quickly,
it means your water hasn't cooled enough, and probably needs another 5-10 minutes in
the freezer. This bottle did come out 10 minutes later, and you can see a dramatic difference
in how quickly it freezes. If you leave your bottles in the freezer too long, They may
be so sensitive that even wiping the side of the bottle initiates the freeze. And it
could be complete before you even get the cap off. If you do get the cap off, pouring
too slowly might result in this effect where the water doesn't pour out at all. And that's
because it iced up in the bottle neck, and it's freezing the rest of the way down. If
you're wondering how cold the water actually is, I was able to measure one bottle at -4.5ºC
/ 24ºF, and there's a good chance they are actually colder than that. If you try pouring
this supercooled liquid into a glass, you might notice it looks a little thick and syrupy.
If you get to this point, try touching the surface gently with an ice cube. Everything
freezes firm enough to hold the ice cube in place, and makes a nice little platform to
continue building your ice towers. When trying this approach, it's important that the glass
is extremely clean, because even a microscopic impurity can trigger the nucleation, and solidify
your experiment prematurely. You could try using this effect to pour yourself an instant
snow cone. As the water freezes, it actually releases latent heat in the reaction and warms
the ice into a delicious slush. I tried using the juice in these freeze pops as a make-shift
snow-cone syrup, and poured it on top to get 3 different flavors. Well, now you know everything
you need to know about making instant ice. If you want to see colored crystals, try pouring
2 drops of food coloring in the water before you freeze it. Well, that's it for now. If
you liked this project, perhaps you'll like some of my others. Check them out at www.thekingofrandom.com