Aquafina will not freeze

Surely you don't think those nice people at Pepsi would lie, cheat and steal ? ! ? ! ?

I didn't say a word.

I was once waiting to cross the border from Canada, and I just idly began reading the ingredients list on my bottle of Dr. Pepper. I saw "monoethyleneglycol" . . . and thought, "My God, that's antifreeze!" When I got across the border, and stopped for gas in Ohio. I checked out a bottle of Dr. Pepper, stateside. No antifreeze.

Here ya go:

https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2002-01/what-puts-pop-soda-pop-antifreeze

Do you people believe everything you see on the internet?

This is another example of how an ideological narrative works. You will believe anything that fits your ideology, the facts don't matter. You could try a little critical thinking when you are confronted with a claim that water won't freeze. The narrative is that anything, even water, from a big corporation is unnatural... right? So water that doesn't freeze makes sense to you?

Just think about this claim. Geez.

https://ask.metafilter.com/142259/Why-did-only-one-bottle-of-water-freeze


I left two 20 oz. plastic bottles of water in my car overnight, right next to each other in the cup holders. One froze solid, the other remained entirely liquid. The one that froze was Dasani brand, and the bottle was 3/4 of the way full. The one that remained liquid was Aquafina, and was 2/3 of the way full. How is this possible? I know Dasani puts sodium in their water, but wouldn't that make it take longer to freeze?
posted by amro to Science & Nature (19 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite



Interesting. Maybe the plastic is thicker on one of the bottles?
posted by kdern at 11:32 AM on January 4, 2010



Were both caps on equally tight? I often have a bottle in my car that I think should have frozen, but doesn't. Once I crack the top, it becomes insta-slush-ice-chunks. Something to do with the pressure change I imagine.
posted by sanka at 11:38 AM on January 4, 2010



If one of the bottles contained significantly purer water than the other, the purer water might have supercooled (thanks, AskMe)---but it didnt' freeze due to lack of nucleation sites (or something).
posted by leahwrenn at 11:44 AM on January 4, 2010



Was one bottle in the sunlight more than the other? Variable solar heating might have a bearing on this.
posted by pjern at 11:50 AM on January 4, 2010



My bet is on supercooling. The same thing happened to me on Christmas -- two identical bottles of water in the car, freezing temperatures. One froze, one didn't.

...and then the one that did not freeze suddenly froze solid in the space of a second or so, when a tiny ice crystal on the lid fell into the water. I saw it happen, and it was faaantastic.

I'm serious, it was one of the neatest things I've ever held in my hand; a shockwave-of-freezing racing through the water.

If your bottles are still below freezing, see if you can make the liquid one freeze. You'll thank me.
posted by aramaic at 11:51 AM on January 4, 2010 [10 favorites]



aramaic, I am definitely going to try that.
posted by amro at 11:55 AM on January 4, 2010



I'll toss in that the variance can also be partially explained by the different shapes of of the bottles -- for example, Dasani has a thinner neck, and Aquafina has ridges -- and their different volumes of water.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 11:57 AM on January 4, 2010



Here you go.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 12:03 PM on January 4, 2010 [2 favorites]



Aaaand again.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 12:06 PM on January 4, 2010 [1 favorite]



I found that Gatorade would always supercool in my freezer.
posted by delmoi at 12:35 PM on January 4, 2010



Its even better if you open the top carefully and try to drink it. You can feel the ice forming in your mouth.
posted by Iax at 1:13 PM on January 4, 2010



is there any way to replicate this experiment intentionally? just put pure water in freezer or.... what?
posted by DetonatedManiac at 1:13 PM on January 4, 2010



Salts in the water don't increase the time it takes for it to freeze (directly), it only lowers the temperature at which it will freeze.

The bottle could have been supercooled, but my money is on something far less sexy. Sunlight, radio clock keeping it warmer, cell phone charger nearby keeping it warmer. Something like that.
posted by gjc at 1:46 PM on January 4, 2010



is there any way to replicate this experiment intentionally? just put pure water in freezer or.... what?

W-G P's first link says yes, basically. Apparently get pure water (not all bottled water is pure enough, apparently FIJI is though) and stick it in the freezer. Take it out the next day and shake it a little. Looks like it took a few tries to work.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 3:11 PM on January 4, 2010



Part of the answer might be microclimate. Once the Dasani bottle started freezing first (whatever the reason), the temperature of that bottle stayed at 32F until it finished freezing (see "enthalpy of fusion/freezing), which helped keep the local temp, including the temp around the Aquafina bottle, from dropping as quickly.
posted by Good Brain at 3:18 PM on January 4, 2010



Our office water filter + old crystal geyser bottle + office freezer gives me a pretty good chance of supercooled water, so water in freezer plus luck seems like a good way of managing it. Eventually the water will just freeze, though, so you have to get the timing right, as well.
posted by that girl at 4:37 PM on January 4, 2010



This is not some practical joke!
posted by mdonley at 5:09 PM on January 4, 2010



Absolutely a supercooling thing and it happens to me all the time. Every night I put a 2L bottle of pop in the freezer (or outside in the winter). About 3 mornings out of 7, when I pull it out it seems to be entirely liquid. But if you crack the lid and give the bottle a sharp rap, it suddenly freezes. (Not solid, but very thick slush. Also, rip the label off before you start it so you can watch all the way down the bottle.) It never gets old. Try it.

Sometimes I'll see this with flav-r-ice as well. Put a whole roll into the freezer and in the morning about half of them will be frozen and the others not. Flick the not-frozen ones to watch it freeze in real time.
posted by DU at 7:17 PM on January 4, 2010



I just want to say, because of this thread I spent an hour last night just watching supercooling videos on YouTube. That is some crazy cool science right there.
posted by Billegible at 11:28 AM on January 5, 2010

I don't know what you would get from these comments on some random thread you found on the internet. This is the way an ideological narrative sustains itself... you pick any piece of information that supports your narrative no matter how crazy it is, and you ignore any information that would refute it.

There are a couple of reasons you should suspect that this isn't true.

1) First of all, the idea that water doesn't freeze is an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

2) You should automatically be suspicious of claims that are too convenient for a political ideology. The idea that water bottled by Pepsi would act any different from normal water is story that is a little too scripted.

3) Anecdotes aren't proof... someone saying "once I left two bottles water in my car and one didn't freeze" doesn't prove anything, there are all sorts of variables one of them could have been in a warm spot in the car, one may have been opened, one may have been in the sun... who knows.

Someone smart will do a controlled study with multiple bottles in the same conditions; like this guy for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk8jjpiW4xk

Again and again, the theme is the same. With feminism, organic food and now water... when there is a story that matches a compelling narrative the facts don't matter.

Water pressure n the bottle, the amount of air which enters the bottle during bottling process, acids or alkalis in the water, other "added" ingredients. All of these make a difference.

Isn't it better to have water which is harder to freeze, especially in the midst of a harsh winter temperature downturn? Pour some aquafina into the drain to postpone the exit pipe's freezing.

We were just having fun with a topic. We don't need to be policed.

Some people will believe just about anything.

First clue that this should have been ignored is that it was shot using vertical video.