http://youtu.be/v-ZIujNWEtY
A machine that turns liquid soda in frozen slushy before your very eyes!
Such is the nature of super-cooled liquids. It's a liquid that's at a
lower temperature than its freezing point. It can remain in this
unstable state indefinitely until something triggers it to turn to ice.
It won't totally freeze up because a liquid changing into a solid also
releases a lot of heat and the liquid rapidly gets warmer.
My son was recently drinking a soda from a plastic bottle. The drink was
turning into a solid while he was pouring it into his mouth. That's a
pretty rare event. I told him to hand me the soda and I took a gulp.
Unfortunately, in those few seconds, the drink had warmed up past a
critical temperature and I got nothing but a pretty cold drink.
It is possible to also heat a liquid past its boiling point. My son's
friend had heated up a mug of water in the microwave. He carried this
mug of unstable liquid into my son's bedroom and it somehow got jarred
in some way and just exploded. He had some severe burns and spent some
time in the hospital.
The weird part was that he had been living with us for several years.
Conditions at his home were not viable. When he was in the hospital, his
estranged mother, who was a nurse, visited him and that broke the ice
between them. He never came back to our house again. He does come by
here during the holidays to drop off large trays of bean dip or
envelopes filled with $100 bills. Ah shucks.