Revealing water’s secrets

Experiments support controversial theory about how water behaves in confined spaces, providing insights for biology and manufacturing. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. An MIT doctoral student and a team of researchers have carried out new experiments supporting a controversial theory about water's behavior that could help explain some of its mysteries. Their findings, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , could have important implications for fields ranging from biology to construction, the researchers say, because the behavior of water affects so many important processes. In this video clip, Yang Zhang PhD '10 demonstrates supercooled water, a key aspect of this research. An ordinary bottle of spring water was kept in the freezer overnight. Because it was kept still, the water reached a temperature well below the freezing point, but the water didn't freeze because it had no nucleation centers ' such as ice crystals, bubbles or ripples ' to start the freezing process.