Water Drops Freezing from the Outside In (and how they Explode)

A drop of water that freezes from the outside-in presents an intriguing problem: the expansion of water upon freezing is incompatible with the self-confinement by a rigid ice shell. High-speed imaging reveals that this conundrum is resolved through an intermittent fracturing of the brittle ice shell and cavitation in the enclosed liquid, culminating in a violent explosion of the partially frozen droplet. Read more about the physics behind this fascinating phenomenon in our article: “Fast Dynamics of Water