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No, this is not a story about kids setting off a 2-liter soda bottle bomb or a mad scientist brewing up an explosive mixture in his garage. This is the story about a senior citizen living in Windsor, Colorado who awoke to the sounds of a loud explosion coming from her garage… and you won't believe what happened.
It is 2:00 o'clock in the morning and I awoke to this terrible loud exploding sound. I didn't know if it came from outside or inside of my house. My dog started barking, and I quickly turned on all the lights.Since I live alone I was scared, I thought someone broke the window. I ran around in the house checking, but couldn't find anything. Then I thought someone broke into my garage. I grabbed my dog and carefully opened the garage door to find a big mess of ice thrown everywhere. First I thought the roof caved in under the snow, because all the white crunchy stuff that was all over my car, all over on the wall in one corner above a table, all over the cement floor. Things were knocked down, it looked like a war zone. What could have happened???
Then I saw a mangled piece of plastic on the ground, and suddenly it hit me what expired in my cold garage. During the day, when I carried my groceries from the car, one of the bags was about to tear from the weight, so I took a bottle of Canada Dry carbonated water out of the paper bag and put it on the table in the garage, and I completely forgot about it. During the night the contents froze and the bottle exploded with a big bang, throwing the frozen carbonated water all over everything that was nearby. Even the top of my garbage bin that was at the other end of the garage was covered with the frozen remains of the soda.
When I first saw the pictures, I thought that someone was sending me a photo of the aftermath of a dry ice bomb. But the story checks out… and it wasn't even Diet Coke or a flavored beverage. So, you know the first thing I had to do, right? I bought a bottle of Canada Dry carbonated water and stuck it outside during this recent cold spell that brought below zero temperatures to Colorado. I'm please to report that the bottle froze rock solid, but no explosion. Maybe I got a bad bottle. So, I headed back to the store to get one of everything I could find in hopes of recreating the experience (just for scientific proof, of course). I'll let you know what happens.
Anything like this ever happen to you?
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January 21st, 2008 at 9:55 pm
It’s happened to me! As a “edu-tainment” professional, I tend to buy a wide variety of unusual supplies. One of the shows I do has a variety of science demos, including the mentos/diet coke. So last winter, I purchased ten bottles of diet coke on sale and left them in my trunk. Two weeks later, after a cold spell of five days well below zero, I opened up my trunk to see several of the bottles broken open. I don’t believe it had anything to do with the carbonation, but more likely to do with the liquid expanding as it froze.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Yeah, Wisconsin winters and diet coke do not mix. It was January and I was bringing a 12 pack of soda with me to school, but had my hands full and didn’t take it in. When I returned to my car later in the day all but two of the cans had completely exploded, the tops blown right off. The syrupy part of the soda was shot from the backseat to the roof and front windshield. I was still finding droplets of dried soda months later in places I never thought to look. I agree with the comment above about it being the expanding of the water, based on the shape of the cans and also the icy subbstance left behind while the syrup (which was not frozen was propelled.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:02 pm
There’s more to the story…
The photo that the woman from Windsor, Colorado sent me resembled the aftermath from a dry ice bomb. I just couldn’t imagine freezing water would produce those results. So, I froze six 2-liter bottles of soda during our cold spell in Colorado two nights ago (the temperature got down to 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The next morning I found the bottles still intact but the contents was frozen solid - no explosion. I remembered the Windsor lady saying the bottle was on a table in the garage, and the thought crosed my mind that maybe the bottle froze and fell off the table. So, I dropped the bottle on the ground - thud - nothing happened. I picked the bottle up and dropped it again, but this time the top of the bottle hit the ground… and… KABOOM! The bottle exploded with the sound of a gun shot. Three of the remaining five bottles exploded with an equal force.
Finally… all of this makes sense. I believe the bottle of Canada Dry Seltzer Water froze in the woman’s garage, the pressure of the frozen water changed the shape of the bottle just enough to cause it to tip over and fall off the table. The top of the bottle hit the ground causing the cap to shatter, instantly releasing the pressure inside the bottle (estimated to be around 180 PSI) and the bottle exploded.
When my dropped bottle exploded, the flying soda that covered the sidewalk and the side of my house had the consistency of a Slurpy. Better still, the frozen soda crackled and popped like someone eating Pop Rocks. The carbon dioxide was still escaping from the frozen soda!
Did I grab any video? Yes! I’ll get it posted to YouTube and post something here.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
In Minnesota, anything liquid and the cold do not mix, but you can get some cool effects!! You can blow bubbles outside when it is below zero and they will shatter like glass when you touch them. You can also boil water and throw it in the air and it instantly freezes in the air! A pretty cool way to talk about the properties of matter!!
I do agree with Erica that the top of pop cans can explode right off. We had some teachers at my school put pop cans inbetween the windows and the snuffers and they exploded during the school day. What a mess to clean up off the windows, but the kids were very excited about it!! What a great way to explore science-when it isn’t even planned!!
January 31st, 2008 at 1:35 am
a great deal of co2 gaz is dissolved in water to make carbonated beverages. when temparature falls below 0 celcius degree the water freezes and the co2 is evacuated from ice since ice cannot hold as much co2 as liquid water. this why a huge pressure builds up in the small space under the cap of the bottle. the colder the weather the faster the bottle will explode. luc
February 3rd, 2008 at 8:33 pm
well seeing this reminds me of what happens when you leave soda in the freezer it well explode because the liquid freezes and expands and plows up.
February 18th, 2008 at 11:41 pm
I had an opposite reaction. I had a can of ginger ale, I believe it was Vernor’s brand. I left it in the backseat of my car on a hot summer day. The car was parked in an open lot, in the sun.
When I returned I noticed that there was sticky spots on the steering wheel, but didn’t investigate. Hey, it was late and I was tired.
The next morning I checked it out and found that a majority of the car’s interior that was in a straight shot of where the can had sat. The ceiling was speckled. The tab (opening device) was in place for an unopened can (it hadn’t moved). The opening however was blown out but still attached. It was pretty obvious at that point that the can had heated up to a point that the contents exploded out the weakened joints of the opening and sprayed out in almost a mist at high pressure.
It just goes to show how hot your car can get, how powerful the sun is and the excitement that a sealed can can bring. I never was able to get all of the stains out. On the upside the car smelled good for quite awhile.