Ships At Winter

Crystallization
Most liquids freeze by crystallization, formation crystalline solid from the uniform liquid. This is a first-order thermodynamic phase transition, which means that as long as solid and liquid coexist, the equilibrium temperature the system remains constant and equal to the melting point. Crystallization consists two major events, nucleation and crystal growth. Nucleation is the step where the molecules start to gather into clusters, on the nanometer scale, arranging in a defined and periodic manner that defines the crystal structure. The crystal growth is the subsequent growth the nuclei that succeed in achieving the critical cluster size.