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

Entropy512 wrote:

ProfHankD wrote:

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.

My understanding is that it limits the size of the crystals grown... i.e., prevents large crystaline spread. Don't know the mechanism, just that somebody in my university got a pile of research funding for it.