The blog & portfolio of Matthew J. Rogers

Brita filters really do work

April 25, 2007

So it’s about 1:00 am (obviously, by the timestamp on this post), and I’ve been up trying to get some coding done. Coding makes you thirsty. Since I’ve promised Amanda I’ll watch my health or some such crap, I figured I’d have plain old water. I stumble into the kitchen, grab a glass, pull the Brita pitcher out of the fridge, pour…

…and stare, dumbfounded, as I realize I’m holding a glass full of solid ice. Not ice chips, mind you, but a solid piece — one whole solid drinking-glass-shaped piece of ice.

The scientists in the audience will know immediately what just happened. But because it’s 1:00 am, and I’ve mentally shut down for the day (I can’t wait to see what my code looks like tomorrow), it takes me a minute. I looked back and forth between the ice block in my glass and the tiny little 1/2-inch opening on the top of the Brita filter, suspicious of its tricks, before the realization dawned on me that I had just recreated something I had seen in all those Youtube videos: supercooled water.

If distilled water is cooled below freezing, it won’t actually solidify. If it is then introduced into a “contaminated” environment (like my drinking glass), it will freeze instantly. Apparently water cannot actually freeze unless it contains impurities. I had bumped the temp on my refrigerator down a couple notches earlier in the day because I thought it wasn’t quite cold enough; apparently I went a touch too far. But at least, as the title implies, this proves that Brita filters really do purify the water, and quite well apparently.

A very simple but cool (haha) thing. Still, it confused the hell out of my poor tired brain for a second. “I just poured water…why am I holding ice?”

8 comments ›
Posted in Miscellaneous, Personal

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8 comments

  • Chris April 25th, 2007 at 8:01 am

    Did you get a picture of it? That’s really neat.

  • Matthew April 25th, 2007 at 10:16 am

    Sorry, no picture, didn’t have my camera charged. I guess I should have taken one with my phone but it didn’t occur to me. Maybe I can recreate the experiment :)

  • Pierce April 25th, 2007 at 1:00 pm

    Haha, that’s really cool. I’ve read about supercooling before, but I’d never thought to check YouTube to see it in action. It looks even cooler than I thought.

  • Matt April 25th, 2007 at 1:10 pm

    That’s pretty cool.

    Another lesson to learn: If you can supercool Brita filtered water, you can probably super heat it as well. Pouring distilled or pure water into a very clean and smooth container and microwaving it can cause it to super heat. The intoduction of an impurity such as a spoon or teabag could cause it to flash boil (kind of like an explosion of boiling water). Bad news for exposed skin. It’s a neat trick if you can do it safely.

    I bet you don’t miss Kevin randomly pressing the button on the pitcher. Now you might actually know when to change the filter. :)

  • Matthew April 25th, 2007 at 1:49 pm

    Yeah I remember that Mythbusters episode where they conducted flash-boil experiments. That can be quite dangerous.

  • Kim October 25th, 2007 at 9:57 pm

    UAHAHAHA awesome!!!

    Yeah it’s like 4 orders of magnitude more difficult to get an ice crystal to form without a nucleus than with one. Spontaneous homogeneous ice nucleation occurs at like -40 C and below. Crazyyy I need to do that here at the National Weather Center!!!

  • Christopher (water filter) Jay January 22nd, 2008 at 5:32 pm

    Very interesting… that’s a great test for any filter. You can’t be sure of what you’re buying anymore. Thanks for sharing the information. It gives me a great idea for an article.

  • Jeff March 6th, 2010 at 2:05 pm

    This does not prove that Brita water filters work.
    1) You used distilled water, cleanest water available.
    2) You poured distilled water into the brita filter at room temperature and the water was sitting in the container and already passed by the filter, (so its like it is sitting in a normal container)
    3) You poured the distilled water into a glass that was room temperature.

    All of this has nothing to do with the Brita filter. Sounds like your being paid for this little advertisement. In fact a lot of times the water can pass through the filter even worse than if you took it from the faucet. Kind of like if you squeezed a dirty sponge.

    Conclusion: Just drink distilled water at either room temperature (best) or refridgerated.

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