Although it’s more efficient for your freezer to be full if the power should go out for a little while, a water bottle is usually full to the top with little air. At least not enough air to compensate for the expansion the water does when it freezes so you will end up cracking the plastic bottle and they will leak once they begin to thaw.
If you really want to freeze your water while in the bottles, remove about half of the water and set them in the freezer sideways to give the water room to expand. If you plan on bringing them to the gym or something later, you can fill up the empty space with liquid water and you’ll have very cold water to drink for your workout and it will last a long time.
I do realize this must be a joke because of the “Hands Down” comment but I’m serious that you shouldn’t freeze your bottles of water.
@cengland0 But if the solution is free of things that can be used as nucleation points for the formation of ice crystals it can exist in a liquid state below its freezing point.
Additionally, the hand he’s saving for later is wrapped and it looks like it has a contents/price label so the implications of THAT are pretty immense on its own.
@GetClosure I was aware of super cooled liquids but thanks for the refresher.
Know about those reusable heating pads that you can activate by clicking a disk inside the liquid? Well, those contain a super pure liquid form of sodium acetate which has a freezing temperature of around 130°. When you cool it below 130° like when you have it in your house at room temperature, it stays liquid because it doesn’t have a nucleation site to start to crystalize and it stays in it’s liquid form. Agitate it by clicking the disk inside the liquid and it will begin to solidify and actually generate heat at 130° while it begins freezing at room temperature.
I’ve been experimenting with sodium acetate for several decades before they were sold as reusable heating pads. Prior to that, the were sold as science experiments to school teachers and that’s when I got mine and showed the experiment to all my friends and family. I’m not a teacher but was able to buy it anyway.
From what I can remember, you can create your own by mixing household chemicals like baking soda and vinegar while heating them on a stove. Obviously combine them slowly instead of all at once. Then let it cool down to room temperature in the pot and you have yourself a home-made science experiment of super cooled liquid.
You can also super heat liquids. Take distilled water and heat it in the microwave and chances are that it will not boil until you start to take it out of the microwave (causing a disturbance in the water) or put a spoon in it. Then it will explode/erupt all at once possibility causing you severe burns. There are videos on youtube with people doing that experiment if you want to see someone else doing it first.
@cengland0@GetClosure
I generally just empty about 10-15% and freeze upright. If I feel really ambitious I top it off and recap once it is solid. Never had any that overflowed or burst in that manner. Usually then get used in a cooler when we are travelling.
@cengland0@GetClosure I accidentally supercooled a bottle of water a couple of times. I pulled one out of the freezer and it was completely liquid. I was thinking “this is weird, I know it’s been in there long enough to freeze” when I bumped the bottle against something. In maybe a second the contents froze from the point of impact to the other end of the bottle. The rapid freeze front was cool to watch.
When a second one came out liquid a few days later I had the presence of mind to call SWMBO over so she could see it as well.
I never saw it happen again. Then again, I haven’t had a need for frozen water bottles for a long time.
Fun goat fact: ‘Hands down’ originated in horse racing. If a jockey had such a commanding lead, in the final stretch he would just sit upright and put his hands down by his sides while he crossed the finish line. Winning ‘hands down’.
Would like to add that although the idea of partly emptying the bottle and freezing them while on their sides is good, part of the current problem is the crappy bottles themselves. A couple decades ago they started making the bottles out of thinner ‘crinkly’ plastic, reduced the threaded neck length and shrank the bottle cap to reduce the amount of plastic used. The bottles used to be heavier plastic with longer screw-necks like soda bottles.
We used to keep a case of water bottles in the car trunk in Las Vegas and here in ill-annoy, and rotate it out every few months. We had to stop doing that in summer when the shitty bottles came out because the heat (up to 150F in the trunk) would cause the bottles to fail, and shitcago winters did the same. The better bottles held up fine.
@duodec Down here in the frigid wastelands of the Arctic South, we have a different problem with the crinkly water bottles. Well, several problems really, but the big one is that the water will evaporate right through the side of the damn things. So you start off with a flat of full bottles, and if you leave them where they’re warm continually, pretty soon you have a flat of flaccid bottles. And soon after that, you have a flat of not just flaccid but obviously not even close to full ones. The only good thing about them is that once they’re obviously down on volume, you can toss them in the freezer without having to worry about whether expansion is going to split the plastic. There’s not enough water left to do that. I hate those bottles.
The flaw in the theory is that by the time that you know For sure that the storm is headed your way, there isn’t enough time left to freeze the bottles of water. So, you either end up with lots of bottles of water in the freezer all the time, which is not necessarily a bad thing, or you end up just hoping that the generator you bought last time still works. Personally, I have lots of bottles of water in the freezer - but that’s because I use them in the cooler when I go on road trips. For a hurricane, I’ve got a pair of generators.
A handy tip.
Strongly disagree with this advise.
Although it’s more efficient for your freezer to be full if the power should go out for a little while, a water bottle is usually full to the top with little air. At least not enough air to compensate for the expansion the water does when it freezes so you will end up cracking the plastic bottle and they will leak once they begin to thaw.
If you really want to freeze your water while in the bottles, remove about half of the water and set them in the freezer sideways to give the water room to expand. If you plan on bringing them to the gym or something later, you can fill up the empty space with liquid water and you’ll have very cold water to drink for your workout and it will last a long time.
I do realize this must be a joke because of the “Hands Down” comment but I’m serious that you shouldn’t freeze your bottles of water.
@cengland0 But if the solution is free of things that can be used as nucleation points for the formation of ice crystals it can exist in a liquid state below its freezing point.
Additionally, the hand he’s saving for later is wrapped and it looks like it has a contents/price label so the implications of THAT are pretty immense on its own.
@GetClosure I was aware of super cooled liquids but thanks for the refresher.
Know about those reusable heating pads that you can activate by clicking a disk inside the liquid? Well, those contain a super pure liquid form of sodium acetate which has a freezing temperature of around 130°. When you cool it below 130° like when you have it in your house at room temperature, it stays liquid because it doesn’t have a nucleation site to start to crystalize and it stays in it’s liquid form. Agitate it by clicking the disk inside the liquid and it will begin to solidify and actually generate heat at 130° while it begins freezing at room temperature.
I’ve been experimenting with sodium acetate for several decades before they were sold as reusable heating pads. Prior to that, the were sold as science experiments to school teachers and that’s when I got mine and showed the experiment to all my friends and family. I’m not a teacher but was able to buy it anyway.
From what I can remember, you can create your own by mixing household chemicals like baking soda and vinegar while heating them on a stove. Obviously combine them slowly instead of all at once. Then let it cool down to room temperature in the pot and you have yourself a home-made science experiment of super cooled liquid.
You can also super heat liquids. Take distilled water and heat it in the microwave and chances are that it will not boil until you start to take it out of the microwave (causing a disturbance in the water) or put a spoon in it. Then it will explode/erupt all at once possibility causing you severe burns. There are videos on youtube with people doing that experiment if you want to see someone else doing it first.
@cengland0 So right! Sodium Acetate is fascinating.
@cengland0 @GetClosure
I generally just empty about 10-15% and freeze upright. If I feel really ambitious I top it off and recap once it is solid. Never had any that overflowed or burst in that manner. Usually then get used in a cooler when we are travelling.
@cengland0 @GetClosure I accidentally supercooled a bottle of water a couple of times. I pulled one out of the freezer and it was completely liquid. I was thinking “this is weird, I know it’s been in there long enough to freeze” when I bumped the bottle against something. In maybe a second the contents froze from the point of impact to the other end of the bottle. The rapid freeze front was cool to watch.
When a second one came out liquid a few days later I had the presence of mind to call SWMBO over so she could see it as well.
I never saw it happen again. Then again, I haven’t had a need for frozen water bottles for a long time.
Fun goat fact: ‘Hands down’ originated in horse racing. If a jockey had such a commanding lead, in the final stretch he would just sit upright and put his hands down by his sides while he crossed the finish line. Winning ‘hands down’.
The more you know
@capnjb
/giphy the more you know
Would like to add that although the idea of partly emptying the bottle and freezing them while on their sides is good, part of the current problem is the crappy bottles themselves. A couple decades ago they started making the bottles out of thinner ‘crinkly’ plastic, reduced the threaded neck length and shrank the bottle cap to reduce the amount of plastic used. The bottles used to be heavier plastic with longer screw-necks like soda bottles.
We used to keep a case of water bottles in the car trunk in Las Vegas and here in ill-annoy, and rotate it out every few months. We had to stop doing that in summer when the shitty bottles came out because the heat (up to 150F in the trunk) would cause the bottles to fail, and shitcago winters did the same. The better bottles held up fine.
@duodec Down here in the frigid wastelands of the Arctic South, we have a different problem with the crinkly water bottles. Well, several problems really, but the big one is that the water will evaporate right through the side of the damn things. So you start off with a flat of full bottles, and if you leave them where they’re warm continually, pretty soon you have a flat of flaccid bottles. And soon after that, you have a flat of not just flaccid but obviously not even close to full ones. The only good thing about them is that once they’re obviously down on volume, you can toss them in the freezer without having to worry about whether expansion is going to split the plastic. There’s not enough water left to do that. I hate those bottles.
The flaw in the theory is that by the time that you know For sure that the storm is headed your way, there isn’t enough time left to freeze the bottles of water. So, you either end up with lots of bottles of water in the freezer all the time, which is not necessarily a bad thing, or you end up just hoping that the generator you bought last time still works. Personally, I have lots of bottles of water in the freezer - but that’s because I use them in the cooler when I go on road trips. For a hurricane, I’ve got a pair of generators.