Flash freezing
natural or industrial process whereby objects are frozen in a short time due to exposure to cryogenic temperatures
In physics and chemistry, flash freezing is a process by which an object is rapidly frozen by subjecting an object to cryogenic temperatures, or through direct contact with liquid nitrogen at −196 °C (−320.8 °F).
This process is closely related to classical nucleation theory. When water freezes slowly, crystals grow from fewer nucleation sites, resulting in fewer and larger ice crystals. This damages cell walls and causes cell dehydration. When water freezes quickly, as in flash freezing, there are more nucleation sites, and more, smaller crystals. This results in much less damage to cell walls, proportional to the rate of freezing. This is why flash freezing is good for food and tissue preservation.
Flash freezing is commonly applied in the food industry and is studied in atmospheric science.
Impact of freezing
The surface environment does not play a decisive role in the formation of ice and snow. Density fluctuations within water droplets result in the possible freezing regions covering both the interior and the surface—that is, whether freezing from the surface or from within may be at random.
The public source identifies “Flash freezing” as natural or industrial process whereby objects are frozen in a short time due to exposure to cryogenic temperatures. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Flash, freezing and natural.
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This entry incorporates text from “Flash freezing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.