Why do full ice cube trays eventually sublimate into empty ones, yet frost accumulates on every other surface in the freezer?
In: 136
It’s about the transfer of energy. The freezer is trying to get as much energy as it can outside of the freezer so the freezer can get cold. When ice freezes, it actually gives up energy called the latent heat (this happens with all phase changes). So if there’s a stray water molecule is in the air and makes it to somewhere cold, it could give up some energy and become ice. The most likely place for this to happen is the coldest part of the freezer which is the back where the cooling apparatus is. As ice forms on that, it makes it easy for ice to form in other places attached to thay until it lines the whole freezer.
As for the ice cubes sublimating. The transition between ice and gas happens all the time in a cold, dry environment like the freezer. However since the freezing portion is more likely to happen around the edges, eventually the ice cube will have lost some of their water molecules to those edges.
Latest Answers