Can You Stop Water From Expanding When It Freezes Into Ice? 

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I love the talk about safety and using a blast shield then waiting til after the time bomb is set to actually set it up 😂

This is also why compressed air tanks (scuba, paintball, etc) are water tested. A failure of the tank when filled with water is much less violent than the failure of a container filled with air.

I worked for a monument company for 6 years. In that time, we saw multiple 2,000 pound stones lifted and slid off their bases by a layer of ice less than 1/8 inch thick. Ice is a wicked powerful thing.

Action Lab: "I wanted a shape that wouldn't deform easily under pressure. What I chose was a cylinder" Ron Weasley: "It's a pipe bomb!"

The steel was also reducing in size a bit. Two for one deal.

In the years before explosives, they used to mine granite by drilling holes into it, then filling those holes with water, plugging those water filled holes with waxed wooden plugs, and waiting for winter. The continuous freezing temperatures would cause the water in the holes to freeze, and expand, which would crack the huge blocks of granite loose from the solid vein of granite rock. Very high pressures, indeed.

For reference, the Mariana Trench has a pressure of 1,071 atmospheres, so pretty intense pressure to keep ice from expanding.

"It's not dangerous this way," he said. "It won't explode." Water: You underestimate my power!

What perfect timing to protect the camera! Also, I didn't know freezing water had THAT much energy! Thanks for showing it!

This is something i've wondered about for a very long time. Ever since my first physics course in Highschool. Thanks for testing this.

We do this at work on a weekly basis to perform cryo scanning electron microscopy on hydrated samples. The goal is to freeze the (small volume) of water so fast that the ice that forms is vitreous (non-crystalline) in order to avoid damaging the microscopic structures we wish to observe. To accomplish this, we put the LN2 under vacuum until it turns to a slush, break the vacuum and quickly plunge the sample into the LN2 and reestablish the vacuum. In this manner, the water flash freezes, forming vitreous ice that not expand as it freezes, thereby preserving the integrity of the structures. The sample is then transferred under vacuum to the SEM chamber where we manipulate the temperature and pressure to cause the vitreous ice to sublimate away, leaving the frozen structures visible to image in the microscope. Cool video, and nice discussion on the phase diagram of water. Glad you got that blast shield up just in time!

Once I was a science teacher at a private school. My supervisor, who was supposed to get lab equipment and text books, had failed to do so all semester long. So, I had to make up my own experiments. It was really hard because it was my very first semester teaching science, so I had to learn lots of other stuff for the first time too. The children asked me to use a fire extinguisher and a pillowcase to make dry ice (I think they saw it on Instagram). I got it to work the 2nd try. As I was passing the dry ice around (I had gloves for them to wear, and told them not to hold it for very long even with the gloves), one of the children suggested I put it in a plastic bottle to see what would happen. I immediately knew that the bottle would fail if I let all the dry ice melt with the cap on, but I thought, "It will probably 'pop' after a few minutes. I just need to make sure nobody's holding it when it pops". However, I had underestimated how strong the plastic bottle was. There was a point at which I could see solid CO2 ice floating on top of liquid CO2, which I thought was pretty cool. If I had been thinking, I should have unscrewed it, but you know young children are naughty and always getting into trouble, so I was distracted. I threw the bottle into a plastic bin, set it behind me, and forgot about it. A few minutes later, it exploded right behind me as I was talking to the children. The trash bin was totally destroyed. It was like 2 feet behind me when it exploded, and I said, "holy ****". Nobody got hurt, but all the other teachers in the building heard it and I got in trouble. * In hind-sight, it was pretty dumb. My only excuses are that I wasn't given the resources I was supposed to have, and I had to make up everything on the fly in my very first semester as a science teacher. So yea, this guy is totally right. Trapping a gas in a container is dangerous. The size of the explosion will be proportionate to the strength of the container. *I was made to sign a paper saying I had done a dangerous experiment outside of the science classroom without safety equipment. I wrote above my signature, "the science room was occupied and there is no safety equipment." I gave it to my supervisor and she looked mortified. She was a middle-aged woman, who I don't think really cared about anything other than covering her own butt. She completely failed to do everything that was her responsibility (get science textbooks, lab equipment, apply to renew my visa, etc), and I had to do these things for her. I think the paper she gave me was meant to put all the responsibility for the accident on me, but my note completely destroyed her intention, because she was responsible for getting the lab equipment. She let me go after the first semester (causing a lot of stress for me, since I was living in the country on a work visa). She said this accident was the reason, but I think the real reason was that I had to go behind her back to do her job for her (getting my own science equipment and getting somebody else to help me with my visa, etc), and she was embarrassed. So anyway, the lessons from this story are that spontaneous science lessons with children are a bad idea (you don't have time to think through all the consequences of your actions), trapped gas is dangerous, and beware of making middle-aged women who are your supervisors look bad (they will be vindictive and won't take responsibility for anything).

6:34 Not pictured is the ice they use in McDonald's, known as ICE OMEGA. It uses the same amount of water as normal ice but takes up twice the volume of your drink.

Well your shield timing was almost perfect

You should use a stainless steel alloy, like 304. Mild steel gets very weak at LN2 cryo temperatures, but the end caps are cast iron which is even more brittle. Also, a smaller diameter pipe, like 1" or less, will be subjected to smaller forces, and is typically over-engineered.

"Let's see if pipes can stop water from freezing" "All of texas" we all ready did this experiment

If you are wondering how I screwed it shut with an incompressible fluid inside like water, some water leaked through the threads as I was screwing it on. So why didn’t the water just leak out when it froze? Because it freezes from the outside in, so the threads froze first so it self-sealed so that it held in the pressure.

This was Brilliant, I've always wanted do this and find out, I always thought the expansion will win and break or warp anything trying to contain it. What was interesting was the other state of Ice if it was possible to stop the expansion. This was the best, thanks.

You mentioned "Don't try this at home." So we tried it at my friend's home. Thanks for the advice.

_"I'm going to be behind my blast shield"_ ...

Hey there. I'm a plumber and I was genuinely not expecting that. Steel pipe is one of the strongest and it's not prone to breaking until it's old and rusty. Thank you especially for encouraging proper safety measures after that awesome reaction.

I can just imagine the cashiers face when he was buying that completely unsuspicious looking pipe

"If you can get up to Ice 9--" Me, who's read Vonnegut: "UH oh"

Interesting question but the answer given at the end of the video starting around 7:02 is quite off the mark: As the dense ice phase starts to form it will tend to lower the pressure in any closed vessel, whether real or ideal. So its formation will be strongly self-limiting. Instead as cooling continues, the pressure will then decrease to follow a phase equilibrium (mixture) of mostly liquid with a small fraction of "dense" ice. The pressure will not be able to rise again until a temperature, where some "regular" (hexagonal) ice starts to form, is reached. From there the remaining liquid fraction will freeze into a mixure of mostly regular ice and some small portion of other (dense) ice phases. Once it is all solid, it could never be all dense ice, as that would not produce any pressure inside the containment vessel, and therefore could not be stable. Instead some major fraction of regular ice would need to be present for any dense ice to have even a chance of remaining. Ultimately as temperatures cool further the regular ice will transition to ice XI (see chart at 6:00), and so you would end up with a mixture of mostly ice XI with probably some small fraction of ice IX.

That blast screen timing was priceless :0)

Has his gloves on when filling the bottle with water Has his gloves off when puring in liquid nitrogen True Chad :D

The subtle klaxon in the background was a nice touch.

Wow. Did not expect an explosion. I expected a crack to appear with ice protruding.

Yes i always wanted to see this!

One of the things I've always wondered. Cool! (no pun intended) I knew there were different phases of ice, but I didn't know some were denser than water.

The last part regarding phases actually blew me away, I didn't even realise that was a thing!

The end cap was made from cast iron which is much more brittle than steel. If you want to try again check out what’s available online for Ultra High Pressure fittings. Some of the items are in excess of 90,000 psi. 😉

AMAZING! Thank you so much, such great serendipity. I have been pondering this topic in my head for a few days and then one of my favourite RU-vidr posts a video on it. Stellar as always. You have my gratitude.

4:19 timing is everything

It’s the fusion of “Under Pressure” and “Ice, Ice Baby”!

That explosion could be measured in mega-tonnes. ( lot of zero's, I know ) Glad he placed the blast shield a whole millisecond in advance ...

I was questioning this yesterday with my girlfriend "What would happen if you put liquid water in a steel case and freeze it?". And this video pops up.

I live in North Texas and I see this all the time when tubular steel on fences, trailers and on buildings fills with rain water and freezes. Square becomes round and sometimes splits the metal.

Bro that was perfect timing. God bless you.❤

4:12 that siren there was just perfecly timed

This was neat! See, I always thought water just wouldn't freeze under "unlimited" pressure, aka pressure from a very rigid container. But according to you that's actually not the case which is fascinating.

"This was cool experiment." ~ Sub Zero

I was scared from the beginning of pouring liquid nitrogen how this will end. Those end caps are made of cast iron. They are quite brittle even in room temperatures.

6:14 im still curious about its molecular structure... When it finally freezes at high pressures, does the water arrange itself the way it normaly does when it freezes or does it stay 'unorganized'

This reminds me of plants being able to grow through concrete.

I have *failed spinal surgery syndrome* and most of my life is spent laying down now. I can be on my feet for no more than two or three hours a day IF I walk at 1mph or less. (If I exceed that I collapse because that's too much energy too quickly) . I crave learning. I crave interaction, like good scientific discussions which I only minimally get. I would sooooo love either a lottery win so I could pay a personal assistant and get the learning and interaction I need or a next door neighbour that actually needed someone free all the time to help with stuff like Action lab does. Of all the strange and varied things I've craved in my life, this is the most unexpected for me. I just couldn't forsee what the future held for me... Still, I'm alive and have access to the internet 😎 and there's Action lab 😎 keep them coming!

"Im going to be behind my blast shield." Proceeds to show us a gas station covid shield.

May I suggest that you use a dye in the water to easily detect leaks when submersed in the liquid nitrogen. Plus it would look really cool when it explodes

If anyone is interested in the practical applications of ice containment, I worked in a lab researching this stuff for a couple years, so read on. It turns out that if you bring water under 0°C in a suitably indeformable chamber, the pressure becomes too high for the water to completely freeze (we’re talking high subzero temperatures > -20°C, not as cold as liquid nitrogen’s -196°C). This leaves two phases, one liquid and one solid, inside the chamber. What’s great about this is we can use the subzero liquid phase to hold sensitive biological material, like a transplantable organ. This keeps the organ much colder than you can keep it on ice (and therefore more fresh), you don’t risk destroying it by ice forming inside it, and you don’t need to submerge it in toxic cryoprotectants. All in all, confining freezing water can help organs last longer and be transported farther to help save lives. It’s neat stuff and we think it’s one of the most promising technologies to address the massive organ shortage in the world. Google “Isochoric (constant volume) Cryopreservation” for more info, including the design of chambers that can actually prevent ice from expanding ;) Also much like in this video, most of my research was conducted by throwing our very expensive pressure vessels in liquid nitrogen to find out what happens. We managed to blow up one machined from a solid block of titanium, ice is serious stuff... Happy to try answer questions if you have any!

I am in the HVAC career and when I saw the PT chart (pressure/temperature graph) my inner refrigeration nerd got so excited.

Well the caps were cast, you should do it again with machined ones

Great experiment! I didn't expect it to be that energetic. Thanks

Depending on the type of steel, it can get VERY brittle at cold temperatures--no need to get to liquid nitrogen temperatures.

Fun fact! These superdense ice phases are the result of a balancing patch to the physics engine really early in the game's history. Without, it was possible to apply infinite pressure using this method, which was too overpowered.

Hey this actually gives me a SUPER COOL IDEA !! The RMS Titanic operated because it had 3 main engines... 2 double acting, 4 cylinder triple explansion steam engines and one low pressure parson turbine... What if you could make a "sterling engine" that used the transiton of water from the different phases in the ice direction to extract energy from the fluid instead of water to steam? So the pistons have an insanely huge amount of torque as the water cools into ice and expands the piston, to repeat the process again?? It would be interesting and super efficient because you are using the temperature difference between a super cold source and room temperature rather than a boiler

My Science Class < The Action Lab

yes, the water is expanding, but the iron is shrinking due to the cold too.

Enjoyed watching this experiment. Thank you for bringing interesting science demos to youtube!

Reminds me of when I was a kid and an unopened can of soda got left in the car overnight during a freeze. Came back the next day and it was all over the inside of the car. 😆

Actually there are two competing forces. While the ice tries to expand, the metal container reduces its size as temperature goes lower. Thats why the pressure inside becomes much higher than what the ice can do alone.

Hint: Expanding frozen water breaks rocks.

Different type of ice you say? I think we might need a video on that subject alone.

I'd quite like to see a string of ever stronger means to contain it. Even knowing it will never work, I'd still be very interested in the various means by which it fails. Once again Action lab guy, you have inspired me! Keep them coming bud! 😎

Without watching it. Once an old steel pipe broke in my basement due to a heater problem during the holidays as I wasn’t home. So… yes.

Omg what a coincidence. I was literally reading about this topic a few days ago, and i was so mind blown about the power of water. To think that expanding water can break anything which comes in its path, even steel and rocks which r so rigid. I was in so much disbelief that i took a 1 L steel water bottle and filled it upto the brim with water and then left it overnight in the freezer. And the next day, i was just shell shocked when i saw that the water had literally teared up a hole in the bottle. Then i did a whole research and found that by tweeking the temperature and pressure, scientists have created 15-16 different species of ice. Wow. But i have a doubt. If i take a bottle made of diamond and then do this experiment, will the water break the diamond too?

Way back in my high school physics book, the experiment was with a steel sphere about 5 inch outer diameter with a 1 inch thick wall. The sphere did split open, and not at the plug.

You can find liquid water inside ice at the north and south pole. The pressure of the ice around it keeps it from freezing. That is one of the main reasons core drilling for samples is so dangerous. The water expansion destroys the drill.

Does extreme cold not influence the properties of the steel? If you made it cold slowly being close to the 0C the steel would have way better properties imo of holding it. It's still going to push out the container tho

That's what happens when you use cast-iron caps, the carbon reduces its strength when frozen. Try machined caps next time. The same brittle effect can happen when welding cast-iron too.

That shield came in just in time...!!! Great video.

You should team up with Destin from SmarterEveryday and record your experiments with his slow motion camera.

Can you do an episode about how durable your "blast shield" is? It looks like it would melt in hot weather lol

I don't know what could I do with this but this thing about water and the way this man presented just made me go WOW!!

Dude, I love you. I'm a science fanboy and I've watched probably every video you've done and never expected "boom science" from you but you've made me remember how cool science is without just blowing up a bunch of stuff. Not gonna lie though, this was pretty cool. Bravo. Good show ol' chap.

So if you get to this denser ice and remove the pressure, is it going to stay dense, or is it going to unfold into regular ice?

Burst pipes buried too shallow or left charged with water in the open such as sprinkler systems in winter is a problem for us with cold winters. In 1971, I was in Navy boot camp. We had to go out to a desert area to practice ship firefighting procedures. It got down to a record 22 deg. F that night. We were huddled around a fire to warm us when a demo marine strainer went flying 4 feet from its mount. A column of 3" of ice protruded from the pipe and was still expanding up. Half of us were from northern climes and knew what happened.

Could you remove ice 9 or ice 12 from it's super container and bring it into a regularly pressurized environment? Or would it immediately expand and turn into regular ice?

3:49 homie was so ready for the container to fail that he froze his table in the process haha

Like the flight alarm in the background before the explosion. Nice timing

That’s something really informative u have such an amazing channel

I want to see this experiment with Beyond the Press's 2" thick steel box...

The siren right before the explosion. Perfect.

Can Ice 12 be taken out of its container and still be solid?

I really enjoy this channel's content; I just hope their safety provisions are robust enough. I'd hate to be reading an obituary one day. That was pretty scary. Stay safe!

Metallurgist here. The ductile to brittle transistion temperature (DBTT) of steel is generally between -10C and 0C, depending on alloy. You dont need anything close to liquid nitrogen temperatures. You could do this experiment in a freezer, or using dry ice with the same result.

3:30 that "blast shield" looks flimsy af

Water: why u bullying me

Betteridge's Law of Headlines is awesome.

Doesn't look like you're stopping Ice from doing what it wants to do!

I was surprised at how violent that was. I have done hydotesting and most of the time the fail is a crack with a very short time squirt of water. (still dangerous if it hits your skin, depending on the burst pressure!) I suspect the reason for the violence here was the low temperature. I think if the pipe was at room temperature and a hydraulic pump was used there would be a plastic flow of the steel until it cracked to let the pressure escape.

if you make these other ices in the container, and you take it out, will it stay that special ice? or will it turn into normal ice?

Ohh exploded. Don't mess with nature!! Thanks man , learned something.

I watch these videos every night in bed before i go to sleep lol. All started when i saw you on RU-vid thanks for the education, and answers to life’s questions!

Interesting connection here makes you appreciate how much pressure 6000 ATM really is. That is about how much pressure that caused the incident with the SLAP rounds on the KY Ballistics youtube channel.

Try the same but put it in a container in the regular freezer. That way you don't expose the metal to potentially big temperature differences. If I remember correctly most iron alloys become brittle when below -25 C which it may very well have been in your experiment. In a regular freezer and especially if you up it to -10 C that'll not be an issue and everything will fall in temperature very uniform and it'll ice inside the container much differently from the top down (because ice floats).

Shorts are cool but I have the attention span to be able to watch your longer videos. Keep them up

I would imagine it just melting again from the pressure, or like the state not changing, because water has different melting and freezing temperatures at different pressures too right.

So how do we see the ice that has less volume? Is it possible?

Nice safety precautions there!