Why do plants die in freezing weather?
Hey. I'm Melissa.
Jam:I'm Jam.
Melissa:And I'm a chemist.
Jam:And I'm not.
Melissa:And welcome to chemistry for your life.
Jam:The podcast helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday life.
Melissa:Jam, welcome back from the Texas freeze.
Jam:Yes. We both survived this Freezing, crazy scenario that Texas has who knows if we've ever seen anything like that. But
Melissa:Not in my lifetime.
Jam:Yeah. It's over, and I'm glad.
Melissa:Me too. I'm very glad. So, actually, the Texas freeze inspired today's Episode.
Jam:Oh, nice. Maybe something good can come out of that horrible week.
Melissa:Yeah. Except it's kind of a dark topic because it's about death.
Jam:Oh, yikes. That sounds dark for sure.
Melissa:Sounds appropriate for the week that we had?
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:Okay. So the topic for this week is, why do plants die In freezing weather.
Jam:Okay. Interesting.
Melissa:Yeah. So before we talk about why plants die in the freezing weather, which I'm very sad, there are succulents and cactuses all over Denton that are dead now. It's very heartbreaking.
Jam:Dang.
Melissa:Before we talk about that and why that happens, I think first, we have to have a little chemistry lesson.
Jam:Chemistry tingles.
Melissa:Don't pretend. It's a nice it's a nice subject.
Jam:Okay. Fine. But then can we get on to what we really are about in this podcast?
Melissa:Which is?
Jam:Life. Get the chemistry out of the way so we need it alive or I'm just kidding. Yes. Let's do it.
Melissa:Or the death part in this case. Nice. Okay. So when water freezes, you know what happens to it. Right?
Jam:Expands?
Melissa:It expands. That's why pipes burst.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And if you're trying to make a popsicle in a cup, it'll break maybe. Ah, okay. Cup. I've done that before. I remember breaking a cup and upsetting my mom as a child.
Melissa:Mhmm. So do you know why water expands when it freezes?
Jam:You know, it's not really made sense to me. I was thinking about it, you know, like everybody was when everybody was worried about their pipes bursting and stuff, And many Texans got a crash course in one of the downsides, I guess, you could say, of chemistry. But, Not chemistry as a subject, but just a natural phenomenon. So all I could think of is, like, we've talked about Liquids and solids and what changes about how the atoms move or or don't aren't able to move when they become solid, but I don't know why that would make it expand. And I also was gonna ask you, Does that happen to other things that go from liquid to solid, or is it is water there's nothing specific about it that makes it expand when it becomes a solid that other doesn't happen to other things.
Melissa:There's something specific about it. It doesn't happen to very many other things.
Jam:Interesting.
Melissa:Water is special. Nice. So we talked about this kind of on the glass episode.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:How when things turn into a solid slowly enough, they'll organize themselves into the most Orderly fashion, they can. But because of the shape of water, it's got this sort of bent angle to it, and we talked about That in our how do snowflakes form episode, water forms in its crystal and state instead of packing in close Together all 1 right on top of another, it basically forms these little hexagonal shapes that pack into each other and leave a lot of space because it forms, like, 3 water molecules, I guess, or maybe it would be 6. Can't visualize it in my brain right now. Mhmm. But it basically forms a little hexagon shape that there's a lot of empty space in the middle of it.
Jam:Oh, okay.
Melissa:Water's orderly form actually has more space than water's Disorderly liquid form.
Jam:Weird.
Melissa:Yeah.
Jam:So does it mean it's possible to Make water a solid much faster and it not become orderly, or is that impossible?
Melissa:Maybe that's theoretically possible if you were to flash freeze it or something, sort of the way you achieve the glass amorphous crystalline state.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:I guess maybe if you could somehow achieve an amorphous crystalline state in water, maybe.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:But I've never seen that happen.
Jam:Interesting. That'd be cool if it will be possible. Especially cool if maybe some My pipes wouldn't burst, but you know?
Melissa:Especially cool about that. And that Actually is a fun can be a fun science experiment that doctor Moon, I think, posted on Instagram Or you can have your kids gather in a bunch of snow and see how much volume it takes up when it's snow, and then see how much volume it takes up when it melts. And it's very different. So you can visualize The solid form takes up a lot more space than the liquid form.
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:Because Snow can fill up a container. You know? You can't put ice cubes in that exact same way. Yeah. You have to, you know, measure how much it displays water or something, which Should be annoying.
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:So what does that have to do with plants dying in freezing weather?
Jam:The water in them is expanding?
Melissa:That's part of it.
Jam:Okay. That's all I could think of. I was like, That would hurt.
Melissa:That would hurt. So there are 3 main ways that plants die When water freezes or when they're in the freezing conditions.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:1, The water inside the cell, it has things dissolved in it, and we'll talk about this on next week's episode sneak peek into next week's episode. But that means it can freeze at a much lower point than 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But If the temperature drop is extreme, the water inside the cell, because plant cells have water in them, They can freeze and the cell the water inside the cell starts to expand, And it will burst the cell as the water expands.
Jam:Wow. Dang. It's crazy. So at this, like, very microscopic level, all those plant cells are just little bursting, And that's made up it's made up of just all those?
Melissa:Little pipes bursting Wow. All over.
Jam:Dang. That's sad.
Melissa:It's really sad. That happened to some of the plants in our neighborhood, and it was really heartbreaking. Second Mhmm. The ice crystals, when they form inside the cell or if there's water outside the cell as well Mhmm. Can pierce the cell walls.
Melissa:Like, it's sharp sort sort of and can break open those walls. And then when everything Thaws out, they'll leak. Okay. So then they can die that way.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:And the 3rd way, this is the most common way, according to the extension at Texas A&M University regarding agriculture.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:An extension, they're the people that talk to the sciences and bring the science to the public.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So according to that website, The most common way for plants to die in freezing weather is the water outside the plant cell is pure, so it does freeze at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And as it freezes, it can draw water out of the cells, Like, a semipermeable membrane so water can come out.
Jam:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Melissa:So then there's more water outside of cell than there used to be. Mhmm. And that can expand and put pressure on the cell and cause that to to burst from from putting all that pressure on. Or if it doesn't do that, if it thaws really quickly, the water will rush back in faster than the cell can re account for it.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And that pressure from the water rushing back in will break.
Jam:Wow. Weird.
Melissa:Yeah. So it's like 2 things that have to do with this cell, the water being drawn out of the cell. So it's sort of like a part 3 Divided by 2. Yeah.
Jam:Weird. You know what I thought I thought you're gonna go with that was just that he said when he said the most common way, I just thought it was gonna be, Like, really simple and not as chemical, but I thought you're gonna say that all the water's frozen, and so they don't get watered, for how many days. It's And I was like, that would be funny if that was really most of it. It was like, these
Melissa:are the bad things can happen, but the worst thing
Jam:is if they There's no water that they can suck up because it's all frozen.
Melissa:Everything's frozen. They're like,
Jam:they get that that sucks. It's like they survive all these horrible conditions, but they just can't. Don't have any water to drink? But
Melissa:No. I I mean, I don't know. Maybe that's part of it. But I think they're more worried about their own internal cells just Bursting apart inside of them.
Jam:Seriously. Dude, that's crazy. Dang. Did any of your plants die?
Melissa:No. None of my plants did. I took them all off the windowsills. However, Mason
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:My boyfriend, he's getting into Growing succulents with me.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And there was a succulent on his windowsill that was looking sad, and we were like, oh, I guess the cold kinda got it, but we'll see where it go goes in about a week. And when we went back and looked, it had gotten really bad, and I didn't realize that actually I've had root rot. So I was thinking it was the cold that it just kinda made it squishy because it did that to some other of our plants just like cosmetic damage. Uh-huh. But that one was actually it was not potted well.
Jam:Dang.
Melissa:So he killed his 1st succulent.
Jam:Man.
Melissa:Everybody has to someday. I blame the cold weather because I would have recognized it for what it was had I not thought that it got too cold on the windowsill.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:So it still died because of the freeze. You know?
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:That's the the 4th way.
Jam:Yeah. The 4th way. Yeah. Confusion. The freeze causes confusion, which kills many a plant.
Melissa:Exactly. Exactly.
Jam:Dude, that's funny, but also sad. Thanks. Sorry, Mason.
Melissa:Sorry, Mason. Sorry about your plant. Okay. So that's it. That is What happens to water when it freezes?
Melissa:Why it expands? It's kinda like we got a double whammy. Yeah. Yeah. And then also how that impacts plants that are freezing.
Jam:Yeah. And there's like a little bit of biology in there even though all the effect that was happening on a plant was chemistry. It was affecting it at the biological cellular level of those plants, which is crazy.
Melissa:Yeah. It is crazy.
Jam:Should I try to spit that back at you?
Melissa:I think you should.
Jam:Okay. So water is a liquid.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:It's one of the coolest things about it For my opinion, especially when I'm trying to use it, I think it being liquid is really cool. So when it becomes a solid, it becomes a solid somewhat slowly, slowly enough to where it can get into its orderly structure Mhmm. Which we've seen before. We talked about it with glass not too long ago, but it happens in a lot of things. We've even talked about other types of crystals, I think, before, like, a while ago.
Jam:But just that that's what is preferred. They have a preferred structure, and if it can Have some time to get into an organized, structure. Everybody's happy. The atoms are happy. They like to get into a certain way.
Jam:And with water specifically, It happens to be in a hexagonal shape. That's what it wants. And because of that, there's this open space. A very small Open space inside of all of those tiny hexagons, which Mhmm. Over time, Over an amount of water molecules adds up to where the glass of water you had There was liquid.
Jam:Now will be will take up more space, at least seem to or whatever, Because of all of those little spaces in the hexagons, once it's frozen into a solid.
Melissa:That's right.
Jam:Nice. And there are a lot of downsides to that in pipes and stuff, but also for our poor plant friends. Mhmm. That just like us have lots of water in them in their cells, which could burst Open if it freezes if that water freezes. Or water around the plant And outside the cells can pierce the cells as that water freezes.
Jam:And the third way is Water that is outside of the cells Mhmm. In these plants. It freezes Mhmm. Which one, puts pressure on the cell walls from the out from the outside.
Melissa:As it expands from the outside.
Jam:As it expands. And then it also somehow draws water Mhmm. Out of the cells as it is doing that maybe because of the pressure it's putting.
Melissa:I'm not sure if it's because of the pressure or if it's because of osmosis. You know? Like, the water balance on the outside, and the inside gets messed up as it solidifies or something. That's a little more biological than I'm comfortable speculating about. But on this extension website, they talked about how the water is drawn out as the water the water inside the cell is drawn out of the cell as the water around the cell starts to freeze.
Jam:Okay. So it draws it out. And Once that water outside the cell thaws Mhmm. It starts to Rush back into the cells that it came from
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Which that sudden suddenly newly available water Everywhere in this plant, is not good, and it's not ready. It's not prepared for that. Something like that.
Melissa:Yeah. And The cells can't take it back in.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:Fast enough.
Jam:And you said that was the most common. Right?
Melissa:Yes. So that's why a lot of times it'll freeze, but it won't get down too low, just low enough for that pure water that freezes out 32 degrees around the cells to freeze. And then it's a bright sunny day the next day, and all that water melts and rushes back into the cells faster than they can take. Dang. So then they're they feel like, I'm not prepared.
Melissa:Dang. And then they burst.
Jam:So I wonder if, like, if you had an ideal Easing back in. Say you didn't have the next day be really bright and sunny, but, like, a week of slowly warming up weather if those plants could be okay or something.
Melissa:I think they would, maybe.
Jam:Man. Four plants.
Melissa:So the reason I Came up with this was because I was walking around our neighborhood and seeing all these I think they're prickly pear cactuses, but, yeah, I sort of Just call them cactuses usually. Yeah. Yeah. Those cactuses were just smushy and laying down on their sides.
Jam:Oh, wow.
Melissa:And it was so heartbreaking. And, also, I was thinking, it's not like it got a ton of water for it to be smushy, so why did the freeze kill it? And so that's where the inspiration for this episode came from.
Jam:Yeah. Interesting.
Melissa:All the smushy cactuses.
Jam:That's crazy. I I haven't really noticed that I don't know if maybe, like, there's not any in our neighborhood, but I also haven't been on a ton of walks lately. So I'm gonna have to look and see if I can on my next walk, see if I can spot some, like, plant damaged plants from the, freeze.
Melissa:But Well and it seemed like some made it. So there was 1 house that had a huge one in front of it That was for sale. Mhmm. It just sold, so I'd been noticing it. And I thought these new owners are gonna be so sad because their cactus is gonna be dead.
Melissa:And it was alive. Wow. Nice. I I did read that some cells have hardening and stuff, and Seems like the younger ones were the ones that died easier, so I wonder if they just didn't have as much or something. I don't know.
Melissa:But Sneak peek for next week. We are gonna talk about why some plants like trees don't die in the freezing weather.
Jam:Nice. Okay. Sweet.
Melissa:So we'll talk about that too.
Jam:Very cool.
Melissa:There's a very application that I did not think of that is very chemistry y.
Jam:Oh, okay. Sweet.
Melissa:So that's it. That's why plants die in freezing weather.
Jam:Thing. Poor plants, poor humans. You know?
Melissa:Yeah. Poor plants, poor Texans this past week. Yeah. Yep. Poor Texans.
Melissa:But this actually leads in really well to a happy thing that I had from this week.
Jam:Nice. Let's hear it.
Melissa:So in addition to plants being out in the freezing weather, there were a lot of birds out
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:In the freezing weather. And the day before, it got really snowy and cold and dangerous. I was over at Mason's house, and We were hearing this really loud noise outside of his window, and we thought a bird and a squirrel were getting into a fight. Uh-huh. So we looked out the window, and Just inches from our face, there's a tree with all these berries on it, and it was covered In birds.
Melissa:Inches from our face. And we got to just sit there and look out of the window and bird watch birds just So, so, so close to us.
Jam:Wow.
Melissa:And that was really, really cool. There was a cedar waxwing that we got to see, and there was robins everywhere. And then I'd been paying attention, and I saw in my backyard a cardinal Uh-huh. An eastern bluebird, some blue jays, And a red bellied woodpecker. So there was birds all over my wintery experience, and it was really, really fun.
Melissa:So
Jam:Nice. Snaska. Awesome. And you know your birds. That's impressive.
Melissa:Oh, I usually Google them
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:To learn what they are based on their markings or whatever because I think that's fun and really interesting. And that was something my mom really liked. You know? So I
Jam:feel
Melissa:like she appreciates it.
Jam:Yeah. That's cool. I like birds too. I haven't done a lot of research, but I've, like like, half fascinated, half, like, kind of scared of birds. So
Melissa:Well, the cardinals looked really beautiful out in the snow. They were so bright red against the white snow.
Jam:Dude, totally. I saw a couple of those, and then I saw a a some kind of blue bird that was moving too fast for me to, like, identify other things about it, but it also stood out a lot. But yeah. Very interesting. Man, awesome.
Jam:I have 2 things to share. They don't have anything to do with Free the freezing. But they do have something to do with chemistry, and I thought you would be interested to hear about both of them.
Melissa:Oh my gosh. I'm so excited.
Jam:One of them you already kinda know about is that Moraf and I have moved now. It's mentioned mentioned a couple of times in the podcast. I'm not gonna go way into that, but We live close to where we used to live. But in that move, we also decided to make that coincide with a an important change in our lives. We got rid of all our Teflon, and we are primarily using cast iron, which Has been very fun so far.
Melissa:Yay. So I love that. Yeah. So that's really exciting.
Jam:Shout out to the cast iron and Teflon episodes from whenever that was. Do you have not listened to them? Go listen to them because they convinced this nonchemist right here to change Something very important about his daily life.
Melissa:Those were some good episodes. They were very life changing for me as well.
Jam:Yeah. So I did that, and that's been fun. And I've got I had a great experience so far with the cast iron, and I have not had things stick to it or anything like that. So very cool. Yay.
Jam:That's chemistry related in my life thing, number 1. Number 2 is something I'm suspecting is Chemistry, I'm not gonna claim it. I'm gonna just explain what's what's happened and then let you decide. Okay?
Melissa:Okay. I'm ready.
Jam:So we have a rice cooker, and we love using that thing. It's great because we can have the rice be cooking while we do other things, and, you know, don't have to worry about that many things on a burner at once or whatever. So what they have noticed, and we make we try to max out the rice cooker, and it gets to the boiling point, water kinda sputters out of the top a little bit, and it can make it just a little bit of a mess. It's not everywhere. It's not crazy.
Jam:It's not dangerous. It's just a little annoying. And so something I tried that I believe worked is that I added Salt to it, which some people do say do that anyway, but I did this specifically because I thought maybe it will make the actual Bubbliness less because of the colligative properties of salt.
Melissa:Hey, yo. How'd you remember that word? I'm so impressed.
Jam:And so I did it, and it has been way less messy, way less bubbly, way less water getting places when I've tried to max out our rice cooker.
Melissa:Oh my gosh. I would say that the chemistry on that is sound. I would also suspect that's what happened. That's Impressive. I'm so happy.
Jam:I thought you'd like that. I actually almost said that before because I've done this a few times now, and I have kept forgetting to tell you. But because I had 2 chemistry things in a row, I thought they they kinda worked well together. So
Melissa:You know, this this podcast really has changed your life, I think, in In some major ways, your cast iron and your salting abilities.
Jam:Just just today, I was explaining to somebody about carbonic acid and that being One of the things that makes seltzer water have a flavor. And I was like, it was just coming out of my mouth, these words, these explanations, and I was like, Oh, am I?
Melissa:You know, that's why we started this podcast is because I was explaining to people things that were happening all the time, and I think my friends got tired of hearing it, and needed a new outlet. Yeah.
Jam:It's like, here. Let's pick 1 friend that seems to get not as annoyed, and let's record it, And we'll call it a podcast.
Melissa:There we go. That was it.
Jam:That's good.
Melissa:Well, that's fun. Thanks for sharing that with me. I was thinking about how The plastic episodes that we did, the plastic series, really changed my life. Things about my day to day life that I have changed because Of that episode, I think it's more than any other one. Uh-huh.
Melissa:Uh-huh. Really got me. So and I think the cast iron one was maybe like that for you.
Jam:Yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure. If anyone has you know, with any more deets on the cast iron stuff or rice cooker stuff or whatever, were any other changes that Melissa and I have been making about our lives because of chemistry, just DM us. That's the kind of stuff we like to talk about.
Melissa:Oh my gosh. Yeah. I love it when people reach out and tell us what's going on with them. Well, Jam, thank you so much for sharing that fun chemistry in literally your life. Chemistry for your for Jam's life.
Melissa:And thanks to all of you listeners for coming and learning about chemistry every week. We literally could not do this podcast without you. So please feel free to reach out.
Jam:And you could also reach out to share your ideas and questions about Things in your life you think might be chemistry. And we could answer them in a q and r. We could do a whole episode about it, so please let us know. Some of the best episode ideas have come from you guys. So reach out to us on Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook at you'd like to help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the cost of making it, go to kodashfi.com/chem for your life, and donate the cost of a cup of coffee.
Jam:If you're not able to donate, you can still help us by subscribing on your favorite podcast app and rating and writing our review on Apple Podcasts. That also helps us to be able to share chemistry with even more people.
Melissa:This episode of Chemistry For Your Life was created by Melissa Collini and J. M. Robinson. References for this episode can be found in our show notes or on our website. J.
Melissa:M. Robinson is our producer, and we'd like to give a special thanks to a Heffner and In Noel who reviewed this episode.
