Freezing-point depression describes the process in which adding a solute to a solvent (i.e. salt in water, alcohol in water), or the mixing of two solids (such as impurities in a finely powdered drug) (in such cases, the added compound is the solute, and the original solid can be thought of as the solvent) produces a decrease in the freezing point of the solvent. The resulting solution or solid-solid mixture has a lower freezing point than the pure solvent or solid did. This phenomenon is what causes sea water, (a mixture of salt (and other things) in water) to remain liquid at temperatures below 0 °C (32 °F), the freezing point of pure water.
Read more about Freezing-point Depression: Uses, Freezing-point Depression of A Solvent and A Solute, Calculation
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“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
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