Thread: Supercooled water ice crystal formation

Hello all, I'm a video producer looking to recreate something I saw on youtube for a project i'm working on. I have been researching for a week or so and can not recreate what I see. Basically I need to produce ice crystals on a flat plain to do macro video on. This video shows exactly what I would like to do. ANY suggestions would be awesome!!!

supercooled water ice crystal formation - YouTube

Thanks,
Derek

First question is do you understand what supercooled means?

I belive it means water that is cooled below freezing and yet not frozen. However you need purified water with no impurities to do this.

Good. The key to creating the images in the youtude video was I suspect the fact it was a very thin sheet as well. That's very difficult to do without causing enough disturbance to start the ice nucleation process. My guess would be it took a good number of attempts for that to work.

Now creating similar patterns on a surface would require a different process. It requires a very cold surface, and just the right humidity conditions, most likely with perfectly still conditions. I don't believe it involves supercooled water, but rather a precise rate of deposition of vapor on the surface. I could be wrong about that, but it's my best educated guess.

I know I only see patterns of interest like that once every other winter season on my car windows; they are so rare I try and take a picture. I think I have one around here somewhere, I'll see if I can find it. I'll then check my weather records to see if I can give you an idea of the conditions on that night.

It will take me a little while, and I have a mega busy day tomorrow, so I'll see what I can do as soon as I can. In the meantime, you might try researching the topic of frost since I believe that's where the answer lies for what I think you are trying to do.

Wayne

Try this link, the top images are of window frost:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/s...rost/frost.htm