water freezing
micky wrote:
IIUC, when water (or anything else) freezes, it emits heat, quite a bit
of heat, and that slows the freezing of the adjacent water. Right?
No, you have it backwards. Freezing (i.ee. thermal solidification) is the
*consequence* of removing a sufficient amount of heat from a thermodynamic
system.
If you consider each unit volume of the substance as a thermodynamic system
of its own, removing heat from one of those volumes can mean that it goes
into the other instead of into the rest of the environment, preventing the
other from freezing, or causing its freezing process to slow down.
See also:
BBC (1983): €śFUN TO IMAGINE€ť (with Richard Feynman)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYg6jzotiAc
PointedEars
--
€śScience is empirical: knowing the answer means nothing;
testing your knowledge means everything.€ť
€”Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss, theoretical physicist,
in €śA Universe from Nothing€ť (2009)
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