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

Thanks for watching! Don’t forget to sub to my shorts channel! youtube.com/channel/UCA19mAJURyYHbJzhfpqhpCA

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

We've been using this force to literally break apart mountains. I worried about brittleness though. And potentially the seal failing as the metal parts contract at different rates, setting off a rapid cascade when water leaks from the container.

4:12 that siren there was just perfecly timed

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.