I enjoyed following this thread. Because English is not my first language, I was hoping to learn the official definitions of these terms. In my opinion, all the variations proposed so far are fine - I don't see problems with using them.
For me, when I see "flash frozen in liquid nitrogen" or "flash frozen in nitrogen stream" I get unambiguous mental images of how the crystals were prepared. When I hear a policeman yelling "freeze" while pointing a gun (no personal experience here), there is no ambiguity that I should stop moving (and won't get confused with cooling myself such that the water in my body would form hexagonal ice). When I hear that a person is frozen by Parkinson's disease, there is no ambiguity that his/her muscle had become rigid. I think that I will continue to use "flash frozen in liquid nitrogen" or "flash frozen in nitrogen stream" and I hope that I would not need to explain to reviewers what that means. Quyen On Nov 16, 2012, at 10:48 AM, Ganesh Natrajan <ganesh.natra...@ibs.fr> wrote: > Hi, > > Maybe we could just state the obvious, ie, that the crystals were > 'Cryo-preserved' in liquid N2. > > > Cheers > > Ganesh > > Le 16/11/12 16:27, Enrico Stura a écrit : >> As a referee I also dislike the word "freezing" but only if improperly used: >> "The crystals were frozen in LN2" is not acceptable because it is the outside >> liquor that is rapidly cooled to cryogenic temperatures. >> >> But the use of "freezing" used as the opposite of "melting" is fine and does >> not >> imply a crystalline state. Ice is not always crystalline either: >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_ice >> >>
