Reproducing Black’s experiments: freezing point depression and supercooling of water

Abstract

We carried out two historical experiments referred to by Joseph Black, one on freezing mixtures of salted water with ice and another on freezing supercooled pure water by a small disturbance. The results confirm thermodynamical predictions for the depression of the freezing point of salted water and for the latent heat of freezing of supercooled water respectively, which came after Black. The depression of the freezing point can hardly be fitted in the framework of the caloric theory of heat, which was taken for granted by Black, and the instantaneous freezing of supercooled water also poses some difficulties for that theory