Will It Freeze?

Unusually Cold Weather Causes Science

the story

This past January 2010, Memphis had what is being called its coldest week on record. Temperatures dropped into the single digits at night and never even sniffed at getting anywhere near above freezing. That's cold no matter where you live.   But rather than just sit inside and complain about frozen pipes and my ancient HVAC's inability to keep up, the kids and I decided to strike up a conversation about how, and why, stuff freezes. From there, one thing led to another, and the next thing you know we are filling up Lit french-fry trays full of pretty much anything viscous we could find in the house. It was time to learn.. Will It Freeze!

the test

So here is the deal. We took 17 different "common household fluids" and put them into separately labeled french-fry trays. A jelly jar full of water was added in as a control. With the temperature only at 24 degrees in the middle of the afternoon, we took the trays outside and set them on an elevated teak picnic table. Within an hour, we were having results. Some expected... some not. Overnight, the temperature dropped to VIII degrees.

the items From left to right, top to bottom, here are the items and independent panel of household residents under the age of 6 decided to choose for exposure:   Toothpaste Shaving Cream Nyquil Maple Syrup (real) Pepto-Bismol Egg (homegrown) Water - the control Ragu Marshmallows

A1 Steak Sauce Lea & Perrins Mayonnaise Mustard Ketchup Italian Dressing Hot Dog Whip Cream (with sprinkles) Shampoo (Dial for Men)

the results

After a few minor "scientific environment violations" caused by the dog in the first hour, we were able to start collecting data. Here is how it all went down in the order in which items froze.

1st to Freeze: Marshmallows In under an hour, these baby's turned into complete rocks. In fact, when hit with a screwdriver, they cracked rather than punctured.   And yes... I realize I misspelled it on the tray. Fortunately, I don't think this effected the result.

2nd to Freeze: Ragu I was a little surprised to find our sampling of Ragu frozen so fast since it has oil in it, but as you will soon see, that apparently doesn't matter all that much. Furthermore, this starts the trend of "less dense" things freezing before their more solid counterparts.

3rd to Freeze : Whipped Cream Even though this stuff is loaded with oil, it's also puffed full of air... which causes it to freeze really fast is my guess.

4th to Freeze: Water Less than 2 hours in and our control water glass was frozen solid. burrr.

5th to Freeze: Mustard While the exterior froze within an hour, the glob was not frozen solid (we tested it with toothpicks) until 2:30 in.

6th to Freeze: Egg Not sure how your store bought egg would have held up, but my home-grown ones were rock solid after about 3 hours. The white froze first, and the yolk held out a little longer, but in the end the whole thing was frozen solid. I wonder if it would have done the same thing inside the shell?

7th to Freeze: Hot Dog As greasy as they are, this thing might as well have been a piece of rebar by sunset (4+ hours in).   On a side note, even my dog wouldn't eat it after having been thawed. It was burnt up and nasty.

8th to Freeze: Pepto-Bismol Not being sure of what exactly is even in Pepto, I'm not sure how I feel about this result. All we now know is that when exposed to freezing temperatures, it will become a Pepto'cicle within hours.

9th to Freeze: Mayonnaise Seeing how I can't stand the stuff, and really can't even ever recall eating any of it, I had not idea as to how this item would perform. All I can say is that it looks even more disgusting frozen than it does when it is in its more natural "puss" state.

10th to Freeze: Shampoo While it took an overnight exposure experience, my "Dial for Men" shampoo and body-wash did finally freeze. No wonder I feel so fresh and clean every morning.

11th to Freeze: Ketchup All I could think about here was that joke about being able to sell a ketchup popsicle to an eskimo in white gloves... or something like that.

12th to Freeze: A1 Steak Sauce This was a surprise. After showing no signs of frosting over 7 hours in, I found A1 to be frozen solid the following morning. It had also lost all of its odor.

13th to Freeze: Lea & Perrins While the surface froze thick enough for my lego men to ice skate on within a few hours, the balance of the sample refused to crystallize until exposed overnight. Not sure why unless the stuff decided to separate or something... but that isn't what we were testing. We were all about whether or not the stuff would freeze. So here is your 11th Place Ribbon L&P.

14th to Freeze: Italian Dressing In what has to be the surprise of the entire experiment, Italian Dressing does indeed freeze. Why am I so surprised? Well for starters, the stuff is almost completely made of oil. This wasn't some wimpy fat-free dressing... this was full on fat happy salad dressing that just decided to lock up overnight. Impressive. Bet you didn't have that one in your office pool did you?

DEBATEABLE: Toothpaste While "something" had clearly happened, I'm not sure we can call our good friend toothpaste frozen after a night of single digit temps. Yes, it was completely viscous and resistant to puncture, but it was also somewhat tacky or sticky. So I'm not sold either way on this one. I think if we sent it off to some outdoor lab in the Ukraine for a week, we could have moved it into 15th place... but until then I'm calling it "debatable". Deal with it.

DID NOT FREEZE: Maple Syrup While it did get a little thick, at no point did it even frost over a little bit. Impressive stuff to be sure that I'm sure could have some other industrial use up in Canada or something if it weren't so tasty on pancakes.

DID NOT FREEZE : Nyquil Without a doubt, Nyquil was by far the most resilient substance in this test. At no point did it even change its viscosity! Amazing stuff. No wonder it can guarantee you a great nights sleep. I'm just glad we didn't change the test to "will it combust".

Well, that's it. Hope you learned something. Please feel free to suggest something else for us to test as we still have another 30 days of potentially freezing weather ahead. If not, be sure to come back here this August to help cool off.

rvining - 1/13/2010 9:53:38 PM hey look kids... it's a new testing 1,2,3! FROZEN FOOD Style!

aj - 1/25/2010 8:00:45 PM we should use nyquil for our windshield wiper fluid b/c that stuff FROZE!