
Scientists find way to make water freeze at boiling temperatures - futureguy
http://newatlas.com/water-weird-freezing-mit/46665/
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soperj
This reminds me of an experiment my physics teacher did in gr.12. The way he
explained it was that water would boil when there was a temperature delta, so
he boiled some water in a test tube, to eliminate most of the air in the tube,
and then plugged it and removed it from the heat. Let it cool down and then
put it on ice. It looked like full rolling boil. I've never tried it again
since.

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dhimes
The boiling point depends on pressure. It sounds like he reduced the pressure
in the testtube be getting the air out and letting the water vapor condense-
then the liquid boiled. Clever.

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james_a_craig
I wonder if the forced phase-change the confinement causes applies to other
contexts? Could we use a similar trick to force superconductive materials into
their low-temperature superconductive phase at higher temperatures?

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bskdjx
Yes, somehow.

What they technically did is raise the chemical potential, mu, of the gas
phase (the phase with the lowest mu wins). TL/DR, but I'm not too impressed
from a theoretical POV.

The problem to replicate this is "what do you do to raise the mu of the non
super-conducting phase?". That's not trivial as many things raise the mu of
the super conducting phase instead, like applied magnetic fields.

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JoeAltmaier
[http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/water_phase_diagram.html](http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/water_phase_diagram.html)

Looks like plenty of ranges where boiling water can freeze with a pressure
change.

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richardboegli
Actual article
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13061282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13061282)

