Supercooling of water can be easily studied with a simple apparatus suitable for the student laboratory. We describe such an apparatus and its capabilities. The parameters influencing supercooling include the initial water temperature, as well as the type and temperature of the chilling medium. We correlate the occurrence of supercooling with the ability of the chilling medium to promptly nucleate ice; if it nucleates promptly, the layer of ice crystals formed on the boundary will initiate freezing of the bulk water without supercooling. If the chilling medium is unable to nucleate ice promptly, ice nucleation is delayed and the water supercools. Students can study and compare supercooling of distilled and natural water. Even quite dirty river water may be supercooled by as much as 5 °C.

Topics
Crystal structure, Crystallography, Phase transitions, Supercooling, Thermodynamic states and processes, Thermodynamic properties, Educational assessment, Laboratories, Gaussian processes, Statistical analysis
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2016
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