On Thursday, November 15, 2012 10:14:54 am Raji Edayathumangalam wrote:
> Hi Sebastiano,
>
> Elspeth Garman howls bloody murder everytime someone says they "froze"
> their crystals. I think her issue is with the description of the process of
> successfully flashcooling crystals in the presence of cryoprotectants as
> "freezing." Freezing technically is understood to imply the formation of
> hexagonal ice
Not according to common English usage or any of the dictionaries I
looked in.
E.g. American Heritage Dictionary:
Freeze 1.a. To pass from the liquid to the solid state by loss of heat.
It needn't refer to water at all, although that is the most common context.
You can find instructions for freezing olive oil to preserve it;
when I lived in Madison one occassionally had to worry about frozen
engine oil; a headline from earlier this year claimed
"Russian rivers clogged with frozen oil".
> while what one really means is the successful solidification
> of water in a random orientation (vitrification) and the prevention of the
> hexagonal ice.
>
> Semantics semantics!
>
> I'd stick with flashcooled or something along those lines.
> Raji
Funny you should say that :-)
While I have never had a referred complain about "frozen" crystals,
I have had several complain that "flash cooling" is different from
"immersing in liquid nitrogen". I never figured out what they had
in mind, but have since tried to avoid the term flash cooling.
By the way, "cryo-cooled" must be a term advocated by
The Department of Redundancy Department.
"cryo" - From Greek kruos, icy cold
Ethan
--
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center, K-428 Health Sciences Bldg
University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7742
