Review of the Effects of the Influence of External Vibrations on the Freezing Point of Water

Abstract

With this paper we want to provide a first glance at some of those researches that studied how to lower the freezing point of water below the ordinarily point by using external vibrations. All the researches started with experiments on distilled water (obtained with different methodology depending on the experiment) and then moving forward to experiments on tap water (contaminated with a known amount of substances). In all cases, methods to bring the samples to an undercooled state were applied at first. Through high frequency vibrations it has been studied how the formation of ice in a vessel of water can be controlled mainly thanks to the development of the phenomenon of cavitation in the water. By increasing the pressure in certain zones of the samples it was possible to study the phenomena linked to water freezing. Some experiments showed how, even with high frequencies, it is still difficult to obtain reliable results on the topic of keeping the water in a liquid state in conditions of low temperatures and with vibrations applied to the fluid.