How Many Water Molecules Does It Take to Make Ice?

You might think that vocalise like a dumb question : why does it matter how many molecules there are , they just need to be cold enough , right ? Wrong : you involve enough to make the complex crystal structure that you see so clearly in snow bit — and now scientists haveworked out precisely how many that is .

275 . But how did they get an answer so accurate ?

Easy : when you shine light through water , it absorbs one particular frequence . polish it through ice , and it absorbs a different one . Using some cagy witchery — o.k. , science — a squad of researchers from Germany were able to add water , speck by corpuscle , into a vessel held well below zero . When they saw a change in the frequency of illumination the sampling was absorbing , they had an response .

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work out that to form the beginning of any ice crystal requires 275 molecules of weewee . It is n’t , however , a amply - formed crystal until 475 molecules are present . The resultis print in Science .

What ’s unhinged is that this is the first - ever experiment to excuse what ’s happening as water supply molecules take form ice quartz glass . I ’ll never front at a snow flake in the same style again . [ ScienceviaScientific American ]

Image byAMagillunder Creative Commons licence

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