Question about ice cube tray freezing first in the front

[Ranger Mike]

sage advice. Will most certainty take it under rigorous consideration
again
thank you community..an honor to be with you all!

 

[Ranger Mike]

evaporator fan.. this is why the front freezes first.

 

[256bits]

evaporator fan.. this is why the front freezes first.

A good post for being a problem of the real home world , rather than of the text book variety.
One does need to think 'what is really going on', and have all the 'facts' been accessed correctly by the armchair analysist.

One aspect not fully discussed would be

So when you open the door of the freezer portion of your refrigerator, you let in hotter air and this causes a large temperature gradient. The warmer air hits the wall of denser cold air and becomes static but it is still hotter than the rest of the freezer volume.

This action reduces the nucleation rate at the front of the ice cube tray. So it freezes before the rear of the freezer volume.

I think you mean a reduced nucleation time would enhance freezing.

Perchance, and speculative, so requires further research,
Opening the door sets up a new circulation pattern, whereby moving air over the tray surface of water causes a shear in the liquid in another direction from before. If any nucleation sites are present, some may be torn off, or apart from one another, providing secondary sites for crystal growth. Is this more predominate for the front of the tray is a question to ask. And have primary nucleation sites already formed which can be torn apart?

In addition, does opening the door let impurities, such as dust or pollen, enter the chamber to settle onto the water allowing an increase in nucleation sites. If so, why would this more predominate for the front of the tray than the rear?

As an end note,
It would be interesting to know when the front of the tray has, or is becoming frozen, if the rear of the tray is supercooled with no nucleation sites developing.

 

[Hornbein]

I am convinced that the reason is often that warm water kicks the compressor into action earlier than a tray of cold water might. End product would be freezing earlier when the cooling cycle is designed to be long.

Oh that's good. It could be it. My air conditioner has too much hysteresis so I'm often telling it what to do by hand.

My thinking was that the hot water had less dissolved air and so froze more quickly. But that may be insignificant.

It would be pretty easy to answer these with experiments. 1) Put the water in the fridge then pull the plug. 2) Heat water to remove dissolved air then put it in the fridge to cool before doing the experiment.