As the saying goes, "Rome wasn't built in a day", so how did water turn into ice? This question seems simple, but no one can make it clear for hundreds of years. Now, Chinese scientists "reproduce" the process of water freezing, reveal the existence of "critical ice core" in this process, and confirm the century-old prediction of the classical critical ice core theory.
65438+February 19, the internationally renowned academic journal Nature published this research achievement online, which was led by Wang Jianjun from the Institute of Chemistry of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Zhou Xin from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. This is also the first time that the scientific community has confirmed the existence of critical ice cores in experiments.
Wang Jianjun, the correspondent of this achievement paper and a researcher at the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the reporter of China Youth Daily and Zhongqingwang that understanding the process of water freezing not only satisfies people's curiosity, but also is useful knowledge-as a common phenomenon in nature, it not only affects the climate, geology and life on the earth, but also plays a vital role in chemical industry, cryobiology, materials science and other fields, such as the cryopreservation of cells and tissues, and the production and transportation of vaccines.
According to the principle of thermodynamics, water molecules will keep moving in solution, and when the temperature is lower than freezing point, water molecules will tend to be orderly arranged.
The formation of ice core is the result of the disorderly thermal movement of water molecules and the competition of orderly arrangement of water molecules. When the size of the formed ice core exceeds the critical size, that is, when the critical ice core is formed, water will begin to freeze.
Nearly a hundred years ago, scientist Gibbs put forward the critical ice core theory, which was written into the textbook. However, the true face of the critical ice core has never been seen.
Wang Jianjun said that the critical ice core is a transient state in the phase transition process between water and ice-nanosecond, and its size is very small-nanometer.
Today, Wang Jianjun's team and Professor Zhou Xin from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences successfully detected the critical ice core. Combined with theoretical calculation, the critical ice core size is obtained concisely and clearly.
Dong June ·AHN, an academician of the Korean Academy of Engineering, commented that this research is one of the landmark works in the field of ice nucleation.
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