It's the end of the first week of Physics 7B (E&M) and I've got open questions to my professor about triggering uncontrolled nuclear reactions (his doctorate is in nuclear physics) and superheating/cooling. The first topic was something I'd been curious about in the past while the second is something that I was wondering about during my adventure with <a href="#">homebrew particle physics</a>, triggered by our short in-class discussion about phase changes.
I'm fascinated by the ability to superheat and supercool water simply by denying it a place to grow bubbles or crystals (nucleation sites). These nucleation sites are simple, everyday things like chips or cracks in a container, or even it's particular texture. It would be more accurate to say that I'm fascinated by the fact that imperfections
cause the transition and perfection delays it.
Open questions:
- Does nucleation get more and more sensitive to more subtle imperfections as the temperature rises past the traditional "boiling point" without boiling?
- How long can water last without nucleation points? Will it all vaporize at once at a certain temperature?
Here's how it'll work around here: I'll add questions as I think of them in this topic (or if anyone else suggests them... not that anyone can comment here yet) and I'll sum up the answers in their own post when I get them. This is the kind of post I expect to have a lot of around here so I'll add it to <a href="about.html">about</a>.
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