Repeated Nucleation of a Supercooled Water Sample that Contains Silver Iodide Particles

Experiments have been carried out on the kinetics of ice nucleation at constant temperature in a sample of supercooled water containing particles of silver iodide. An automatic apparatus was used to record the various times that elapse before nucleation occurs. The results show ice formation to be largely a stochastic process whose probability of occurrence during a given time interval increases by a factor of over 4 for each degree Celsius of supercooling. This finding may have implications for the behavior of ice nucleating particles in the atmosphere.