What do I need to create water with negatively charged ions?

ProfHankD wrote:

Darkmatterx76 wrote:

Thanks for the reply.

The electricity also does something else. It arranges the molecules in a very structured way. As the ice later warms and starts to melt, geometric seams form in the ice that seem to glow due to how light interacts with the seams.

The other issue. Safely adding electricity to metal in water. I'm also not entirely sure yet how to make sure that the charge makes the ions negatively charged.

The key trick that I'm aware of is using water that has few impurities (especially not calcium -- that makes ice cubes with a dull white coat on them!) and removing the air bubbles in the water before freezing. I think slow freezing does that, but boiling the water first is a trick I've heard many times.

Boiling will definitely degas the water, and will remove some amount of calcium since calcium's solubility actually decreases with increasing temperature (which is why hard water is such a huge problem for boilers and hot water heaters...)

Obviously distilled water, with a quick boil to degas just before freezing, is ideal.

I also know that freezing cells while exposing them to microwaves tends to cause less damage to the cells because the ice crystals don't form in a way that breaks the cell walls. Basically, that problem has to do with the fact that water initially expands when it freezes, thus formation of large crystals causes locally large expansions that can rupture cell walls. Perhaps passing an electrical current has a similar effect -- disruption or promotion of crystaline nucleation sites? Not my field....

That's an interesting one.  I do know that microwave absorption changes depending on state - glass becomes vastly more absorptive when hot (which can lead to some fun "stupid microwave tricks" where a glass bottle that normally doesn't react at all to a microwave will melt itself to slag if you just heat up a small portion cherry red before putting it in the oven), and similarly, when water freezes, its molecules lock together in such a way as to no longer resonate at typical microwave oven frequencies, and thus not absorb nearly as much energy.  I am guessing that the microwave behavior here leads to a melt/refreeze cycle at the boundary that behaves similarly to an extremely rapid freeze.