"Physicists at the University of Amsterdam came up with a really cool bit of Christmas decor: a miniature 3D-printed Christmas tree, a mere 8 centimeters tall, made of ice, without any refrigeration equipment or other freezing technology, and at minimal cost. The secret is evaporative cooling, according to a preprint posted to the physics arXiv. Evaporative cooling is a well-known phenomenon; mammals use it to regulate body temperature."
"You can see it in your morning cup of hot coffee: the hotter atoms rise to the top of the magnetic trap and "jump out" as steam. It also plays a role (along with shock wave dynamics and various other factors) in the formation of " wine tears. " It's a key step in creating Bose-Einstein condensates. And evaporative cooling is also the main culprit behind the infamous "stall" that so frequently plagues aspiring BBQ pit masters eager to make a successful pork butt."
A miniature 3D-printed ice Christmas tree measuring 8 centimeters tall was produced without refrigeration or cryogenics by harnessing evaporative cooling. Evaporative cooling is a common physical process that regulates temperature in mammals and appears in phenomena such as steam from hot coffee, the formation of wine tears, and in cooling steps for Bose-Einstein condensates. The 3D-printing method places a water-jet nozzle inside a vacuum chamber so the printer's motion control guides the water jet layer-by-layer, freezing geometry on demand. This vacuum-jet approach eliminates the need for cooled substrates and enables minimal-cost ice printing.
Read at Ars Technica
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