Ron DeBlock wrote:

If the ambient temperature is below freezing, you can store soda cans for
only a few hours before they rupture. Last winter, my wife bought several
cases of soda in cans and a bunch of 2L plastic bottles, then left them in
her minivan overnight. What a mess! The 2L bottles didn't burst, but
they swelled to about 50% larger than normal.


FWIW when I (Can't blame everything on the kids now..) stick an unopened
can of Coke or Pepsi in the kitchen freezer to cool it down fast and
then forget it's there, it freezes and the ends bulge, but it doesn't
"blow up" until someone finds it, take it out and sets it on a counter.

The first time that happened we heard a noise from the kitchen about
twenty minutes later when the can ruptured and soda squirted all over
the place.

Someone else did the same thing a while later, with the same results.

After "a sample of two" we wised up, and if we find a forgotten frozen
can of soda we know now to stand it in an open cooking pot with a lid
over it and wait for it to erupt.

I asked the guys on the sci.physics newsgroup why it happened that way
and their concensus had something to do with saturation pressure of CO2
at different temperatures and the fact that when placed in the freezer
the contents freeze "from the outside in" but when it's removed they
start melting "from the outside in".

More than that I can't remember.

Jeff

--
Jeffry Wisnia

(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented."