It takes some heat to form ice! : vimarsana.com

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IMAGE: The study results of Anton Tamtögl et al lead to a completely new understanding of ice formation: Water molecules require additional energy before they freeze into ice.
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Credit: © Lunghammer - TU Graz
Water freezes and turns to ice when brought in contact with a cold surface - a well-known fact. However, the exact process and its microscopic details remained elusive up to know. Anton Tamtögl from the Institute of Experimental Physics at TU Graz explains: "The first step in ice formation is called 'nucleation' and happens in an incredibly short length of time, a fraction of a billionth of a second, when highly mobile individual water molecules 'find each other' and coalesce." Conventional microscopes are far too slow to follow the motion of water molecules and so it is impossible to use them to 'watch' how molecules combine on top of solid surfaces.

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