Interesting: Water can freeze at room temperature.

[damocles]

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050827/fob2.asp

 

In the presence of localized electromagnetic fields a thousand times weaker than previously predicted, water molecules align in solid lattice crystal patterns at standard atmospheres and pressures.

 

Is the water molecule the only molecule susceptible to this behavior?

[Eclogite]

Intuitively I would expect ammonia might be effected to some smaller extent. In both instances the culprit would likely be hydrogen bonding, which is responsible for many of the anomalies of water and the lesser, though interesting, anomalies of ammonia.

[Dark Mind]

Interesting... One step closer to being able to turn any pool into a cryogenics lab on a hot Summer day :eek2:.

 

You can boil water at any temperature in a vacuum (But then again... not really much of any temperature in a vacuum ;), just no air pressure so the water begins to try to expand and... blah blah blah). :)

[nkt]

The slight issue is that they don't take the vibration of the tip into account. It could easily be that the vibration causes the effect in conjunction with the voltage, rather than just the voltage. If you lifted the water away slightly, you would get surface tension effects on the surface, and if that were the underside of the probe, you would get an unexpectedly high force result.

 

Because they didn't do anything to confirm the presence of "ice", for example X-ray crystalography, I'd say this might be a spurious result, or even just wrong.

 

Water does weirdness well. We wouldn't be here without it. So it still might be right. Calling it "ice" is a bit premature, though.

[HydrogenBond]

The hydrogen bonding within water allows structures to occur even within liquid water. The difference between liquid water structures and ice is hydrogen bonding length. The length is longer for ice. This is why ice expands and floats on water. Exciting hydrogen bonding within liquid water structures could theoretically create an ice analog by causing the structural hydrogen bonds to reach the ice bond lenght. This would be an unstable phase at room temperature.