While eating an afternoon ice cream with swollen and UNFROZEN cherries, I began to think again about two questions I asked myself:

What is antifreeze in dried fruits?

How does any antifreeze that prevents water from freezing at very low temperatures (Up to minus 75 degrees Celsius) work?

The second question, of course, is much more interesting than the first one.

I did not find the answer to the first one in the available literature, I caught a hint: Propylene glycol is a good antifreeze and, unlike ethylene glycol, is NOT poisonous. Propylene glycol is obtained in various ways, including NON-PURELY CHEMICAL SYNTHESIS from certain initial substances, as well as through the FERMENTATION of glucose.

That’s the answer!

Obviously, these natural fermentation processes by enzymes take place in fruits during their drying as a measure to combat drying. So, most likely, the concentration of naturally formed propylene glycol in dried fruits increases and THIS causes the NON-FREEZING of dried fruits swollen from water in the freezer.

And, here, I couldn’t find the answer to the second question either in literature or on the Internet. Anything is written, but NOT A WORD ABOUT THE PHYSICAL MECHANISM OF ANTIFREEZE WATER NON–FREEZING!

Okay.

I had to come up with it myself.

And suddenly it turned out to be a rather funny and interesting model of the phenomenon.

Many years ago, I thought about one well-known “anomaly” of water: When cooled, its density increases, as it should for most substances, but when the temperature drops from plus four degrees Celsius, its density begins to DECREASE again!

And then a seditious thought occurred to me that the water BEGINS TO FREEZE NOT AT ZERO DEGREES, as is generally accepted, but at plus four! But in this four-degree range from plus four to zero, it REMAINS LIQUID, because ice crystals are already forming in it, but these crystals are LIQUID! And, since ice crystals have a lower density than water, the total density of water begins to decrease! So, this anomaly is NOT peculiar to WATER, but, as often happens, to our dogmatic thinking, when one dominant in consciousness collides with another that contradicts it!,

This idea, when I tried to share it with familiar physicists, received total and decisive ridicule, and for a long time I did not dare to express it anymore, until I came across a clear confirmation of this assumption in an article about meltwater.

Now let’s get to the heart of the matter.

Obviously, antifreeze DOES NOT PREVENT water from freezing, but only prevents SOLID ICE from forming! That is, liquid water with antifreeze at subzero temperatures is a special kind of ice – LIQUID ICE!

Obviously. molecules of antifreeze substances contribute to the formation of liquid ice crystals, rather than ordinary, solid ones.

To form solid ice, water molecules must combine into certain structures. And the antifreeze molecules located between them, with their electromagnetic fields, prevent this and the “freezing” molecules combine into slightly different crystal structures of ice, but these crystals are LIQUID!

Another allotropic type of ice.

So the note could be called “Liquid Ice”.

Faciant meliora potentes

5 XII 2024