Can levels be stored in an unheated space without worry that the vial liquid will freeze?
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Replies
yes
What's the freezing point of that stuff in the vial? Any idea?It can get pretty cold here.
I was framing a house once at 15 below 0, actual, not wind chill. The level was perfect. (Although I frostbit my toes on both feet!)
Is that cold enough for you?John Svenson, builder, remodeler, NE Ohio
I don't think wind chill would affect the temperature in a sealed vial though.We use windshield washer fluid rated down to -45C (-49F). We used to use -35 but for the last few years it has been -40 and -45. I guess it's getting colder every year.
Wind chill only affects how fast a liquid will take to freeze from a given temperature. The lower the wind chill, the less time it takes to freeze. I only mentioned wind chill so that no one would question whether I was talking actual temperature or not.John Svenson, builder, remodeler, NE Ohio
we had WC in the 100 below range a few weeks back....
made no diff to me if the level froze or not...
It was in the truck and it survived...
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
WOW!!! What a Ride!
I don't think wind chill would affect the temperature in a sealed vial though.
Tomchark, windchill doesn't actually make anything colder. If the temparature is 33 and you have 100mph winds....the water is still water...it won't freeze.
More interesing is this: if you have a paper cup full of water, and set it in a bonfire, the paper cup won't burn until the water is boiled out!
blueWarning! Be cautious when taking any framing advice from me. Although I have a lifetime of framing experience, all of it is considered bottom of the barrel by Gabe. I am not to be counted amongst the worst of the worst. If you want real framing information...don't listen to me..just ask Gabe!
And if you take an "empty' can of Paslode Impulse fuel and throw it on a construction fire, the resulting explosion will scare the crap out of everyone, and the neighbor will call the cops!
I wonder what a full can would sound like......................John Svenson, builder, remodeler, NE Ohio
>>Tomchark, windchill doesn't actually make anything colder.Then why do they call it windchill?Back to the sealed level vial. If the outside of the glass is dry then wind would not make a difference in the temperature of the spirit inside the vial. If the outside of the glass is wet then wind speeds up the evaporation of the water and the vial is chilled.To make ice from water just by blowing air on the water? I believe it can be done if the water temperature is very close to 32F and the wind is like gazillion mph.
Wind chill is the effect the wind has on cooling an object, or person, from it's initial temperature, to the existing temperature. A person, or a cup of coffee, or a hot poker, will have it's temperature reduced more quickly if air is moving over it. The faster the air moves, the faster the object cools. The moving air cannot force the object to be colder than the existing temperature.
What you describe, the object being wet, is cooling aided by evaporation, a seperate phenomena. Evaporation can reduce the temp of an object while it is taking place, but after evaporation is complete, the object will return to room temperature.
On a person, wind chill is the the speed at which flesh will freeze in a given condition. The greater the wind, the faster the the flesh will freeze, provided the air temp is freezing or below. If the temp is above freezing, it won't freeze, but it will be reduced at a rate faster than calm air, therefore wind chill can be below zero, even though the person's flesh would never actually freeze.
John Svenson, builder, remodeler, NE Ohio
The original windchill charts were developed, very scientifically, by placing buckets of water outside and timing how long they took to freeze. (The charts were reworked several years ago to be a little more realistic.)
What's unrealstic about measuring how long it takes to freeze buckets of water?
Nothing, if that's what you want to measure. Only vaguely correlates to how the temp/wind affects a human, though.
Trying to give him a hard time? :)
What's your definition of wind chill?
My impression is wind chill is an effect measured by a windchill factor developed by the weatherman to tell people how cold it would feel when you are outside taking the presence of wind into account.
The only difference I've noticed in very cold weather is that the bubbles get a bit smaller.
I've never had a problem down to 35 below actual temp.Language is my second language.
>>The only difference I've noticed in very cold weather is that the bubbles get a bit smaller.Can you really see the difference? I thought my eyeballs get smaller in very cold weather so the bubble looks smaller. Not? :)OK the glass contracts the most of the three, and liquid is not as compressable as gas so the bubble should be smaller in cold weather. You must have good eyes.
I can clearly see the difference.
I also want to say that I sure have no intention of going outside when it's 35 below ever again if I can posibly avoid it!Language is my second language.
I grew up around Buffalo so I know what cold is. But dang, I don't know how you guys do it...
Does the fact that the liquid in most levels is greenish-yellow ring a bell? Looks a bit like anti-freeze, doesn't it?
"I cut this piece four times and it's still too short."
Good thought, but propylene gycol and ethylene gycol are colorless. A bright green dye is added to antifreeze for safety. It is that bright green at a concentration of about 5 parts per million. Had a friend who spilled some of the pure stuff in a chem-supply house driveway. He washed it into the gutter. The dogs in the neighborhood were peeing green for weeks!The levels could be made with gycol, but any liquid could hold a green dye. I'd use alcohol for its lower viscosity - faster to settle down. Gycol would be slow like maple syrup in cold temps.David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
I think the tint is to make it easier to see the bubble.
Change from a hot room to a 30 below worksite (at 30 below it almost doesn't matter if you are in F or C) might be a change in absolute temperate on the Kelvin scale of something like 300K to 240K. A drop to 80% of the original temperature. Thus, all else being equal, the bubble would be 80% its original size.
I've never heard that the volume of a gas is directly proportional to the Kelvin scale. Doesn't sound right to me at all.
Any gas has a certain temperature at which it condenses, (for water vapor it's 212 F, or 100 C, at sea level) but it certainly is much higher than Abolute Zero. Even Nitrogen, which composes most of our atmospheric gas, condenses at a much higher temp than 0 deg K.John Svenson, builder, remodeler, NE Ohio
IIRC, the volume of "ideal" gas at a given pressure is proportional to absolute temp, plus a small fudge factor (since even an ideal gas doesn't contract to zero at absolute zero). Most gasses follow "ideal" rules relatively well at "normal" temps, the big exception being acetyline.However, the gas and fluid are enclosed in a glass or plastic vial, and that vial doesn't change shape (or volume) much with temp changes. The fluid also doesn't expand/contract much with temp. So the bubble should remain about the same size (only changing pressure), regardless of temp.However, I have also noted an apparent change in bubble size with temp. It may be that the vial contracts enough to accomplish this. This would be especially likely with plastic vials.
Precisely, that's one of the ideal gas laws from high school chemistry, and air is pretty much ideal at temperatures humans operate under. The phrase, 'all things being equal' implied I was ignoring small details. It's beyond me to calculate how much the vial would resist distortion paired with its own subtle shrinkage. Glass does have some flexibility.
If it does shrink close to 20%, the human eye would be helped to see it by the referenc lines placed right on top of the bubble, so my five bucks said people are remembering correctly. We'll just have to get a picture and hope nobody shatters the vial, with rapid temp change, in trying.
Of course, another point is that a change in viscosity of the fluid will influence how much the bubble spreads out, making it appear larger or smaller.
How the hell did this degenerate into a discussion of physical chemistry?! Just a correction to some of the partial/misinformation that's been provided:
The vial in the level has a near-constant volume with temperature- it's a sealed unit, the glass or plastic of which may change in volume a few ten-thousandths per degree of temperature change. The vial contains mostly liquid and some gas (i.e. the "bubble", which is basically the difference between the volume of the vial and the volume of the liquid). It's unclear if this gas is actually a gas (i.e. air) or just the vapour of the liquid in the vial. No matter- it's the volume of the LIQUID which determines the size of the bubble- the nature of the gas merely determines the pressure, which we neither know nor much care about in this case. Liquids, by their nature, change only a small (but not negligible!) amount in volume with changes in temperature and pressure. That's why a thermometer works- and why the capillary inside the thermometer is very much smaller in volume than the bulb itself. It's also why piping or a bottle or jar can burst if it's completely filled with water and then sealed and heated.
The volume of the bubble in the vial will be roughly proportional to the absolute (Kelvin or Rankine) temperature of the fluid in the bubble, but the volume of the bubble at the two temperatures will not be the simple ratio of the Kelvin temperatures- the constant of proportionality (the linear volume expansivity of the liquid with temperature) is a small number, not unity! As the temperature decreases, the pressure in the bubble will decrease, but the liquid volume and hence the size of the bubble itself will change little. At most the change will be a few percent over sixty degree C in temperature.
At constant, modest pressures (i.e. inside a cylinder with a frictionless piston), gases do change in volume in nearly perfect proportion to the absolute temperature at equilibrium. But at constant volume (i.e. in a sealed system), gases change in PRESSURE in near perfect proportion to their absolute temperature at equilibrium. This of course is not true of saturated vapours where a liquid phase can form (i.e. steam, propane etc.), where the relationship between volume and pressure is dependent on the saturation equilibrium.
More than you needed to know I'm sure!
I read a story about a mountaineer whose eyeballs froze in extreme cold but I do think his level still worked.
But how could he level anything with the frozen eyes?
I'd suspect he would at least be doing as good as my boss. Plumb,true, level, and the horizon all seem the to be the same thing to him. You got a line of crooked telephone poles somewhere around your neighborhood, that was either him or his relatives. When they built Hadrian's wall across England, to keep out the picts and scots and celts, it wanders around like a drunken crow, that was his ancestors. Like and equal are not the same thing. He is the only person this side of Greenland that uses a frozen level -winter,summer,spring, or fall.
I wonder if he had something to do with my house? It's none too level. Or square either.
Yep, my boss is personally responsible for every quarked, settled, twisted domicile, every self-closing self-opening door, every slope that drains through a house instead of around it... I also think he invented aluminum romex and that one kind of cheese nobody likes but you keep buying by mistake.
Wow! Now I know the whole story! Even the cheese? Who would have known that? I have 2 kinds of that cheese in my refrigerator even as we speak.
Nah, McDonald probably built your house. His level was off 1/4" in four feet.
I could live with that.
That is so funny.
2nd yes. In olden times, distilled spirits were used in level vials to prevent them freezing in winter, giving rise to the appelation "whiskey stick" for a spirit level. 25 years ago I worked with an older carp who always called his level by that name, or some variant. I use it now because it is, in the words of the Magliozzi brothers, "historic and folkloric."
Bill
yup
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
WOW!!! What a Ride!
I've had a 4-footer stored in the unheated garage in MN for over ten years. No problems yet.
-40....
good to go here...
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
WOW!!! What a Ride!
As long as you stay on earth I think you will be OK.
Alcohol is often the liquid in the vials. It's freezing point is around -117 C. Hopefully your garage doesn't get that cold.
Beat it to fit / Paint it to match