Rushing water

[Kriton Kyrimis]

DON:

> just as rushing water won't freeze.

This sounds to me like a tautology. (If it is rushing, it is water,
therefore it is not ice!) If it weren't, I could make a torus (a tube
whose ends are joined together) full of water, with some kind of a motor
in it to keep the water flowing round and round at a nice "rushing"
speed. I could then lower the temperature arbitrarily, and the water
inside the contraption would remain liquid. This somehow doesn't sound
right.

There is this notion of "supercooling", where a substance can remain
liquid at a temperature below its freezing point, but this can only
happen under special circumstances, one of which is that the liquid must
be perfectly still, not moving.

> My degree is in engineering, not chemistry. But I suspect that if you ever
> actually try to invent the gas described in this story, you *might* be
> disappointed.

Then again, someone might be crediting a certain comic book they had read
in their youth as the source of inspiration for their invention. [Which
is why, I suspect, you said *might* instead of *will*!]

	Kriton	(e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
	      	(WWW:    http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis)
-----
"I'm what monsters have nightmares about!"
-----