Maximum Water Freezing Rate?

Question

I cannot seem to find any information on this on the internet; i'm wondering does anyone know if there is a maximum freezing rate for anything? Specifically water...

i'm wondering does anyone know if there is a maximum freezing rate for anything? Specifically water...

If you have 1000 gallons of water, and leave it in a room at a temperature of
-2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000C,
and another 1000 gallons of water in another room at a temperature 100 degrees lower, would there actually be a difference in the speed of freezing, or would it just be freezing so fast, that it can't be frozen any faster?

Answer 1

The maximum rate at which something can freeze depends on how fast you can remove heat from it (assuming that it started at freezing point, and so you are only removing latent heat).

This depends on so many factors that it would be impossible to quote a maximum rate. It depends on the temperature of the surroundings, the nature of the water surface/vessel, surface area to volume ration and any movement in the air/liquid surrounding the water.

For instance, a 1 litre cube of water in air at -30C will take a while to freeze, while a drop of water will freeze almost instantly.

Answer 2

Maybe we should ask Arnold Schwartzenegger (Mr. Freeze in the Batman movie).

Heat is motion. In water, it is the average speed of the molecules.

Freezing happens when much of the kinetic energy is transferred to something else.

How fast can you transfer the energy of motion from the water molecules to something else?

Consider this, heat is the random motion of the water molecules. If you made all the molecules change directions so that they would move it exactly the same direction, the water would freeze and the ice would accelerate to the medium speed of the molecules in that direction. Faster than a speeding bullet.

Answer 3

2 - 4 winters ago the local (Fargo, ND) weatherman made national news because he threw water from a bucket into the air. It came down frozen. This was an especially cold day -40F or colder. That was pretty quick. As epidavros said, when the volume separates into drops and the surroundings are far below freezing, it freezes quickly.