Freeze Grenades

[Blood Legend]

Im in need of a bit of lore help with a TL-11 freeze grenade. Whats the most likely candidate of chemicals we could put in a bomb that would freeze a cubic meter of water in a second, with the aid of superscience?

How much damage would that kind of device cause if we got it to work?

[Phantasm]

Sounds like a superscience version of Freon or possibly something akin to liquid nitrogen.

Damage-wise, you're probably looking at some combination of Fatigue with Freezing Hazard, Binding (for blocks of ice), Burning w/ No Incendiary Effect (ala "freezer-burn"), or (possibly) Corrosive. Realistically, you're probably looking at 2d of any of these tops (ST 7-ish for Binding); TL11 superscience, however, could be any number, though I wouldn't go over 6d, with Binding of 15+.

My own anti-personnel freeze grenades do ST 12 Binding with linked cyclic 1d-2 Freezing Fatigue damage. YMMV, though.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Im in need of a bit of lore help with a TL-11 freeze grenade. Whats the most likely candidate of chemicals we could put in a bomb that would freeze a cubic meter of water in a second, with the aid of superscience?

Basically nothing? A layer of material at absolute zero, in contact with water, would take on the order of a hundred hours to freeze a meter, because ice has a high heat of fusion and isn't a particularly good thermal conductor. In one second you might be able to freeze 2mm, so if you can achieve a fine mix of water with your coolant (say, dry ice) it would flash freeze, but since your coolant just boiled you probably have rather fluffy snow, not ice.

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

How much damage would that kind of device cause if we got it to work?

Depends. Are you talking about freezing a chunk of water (mild shrapnel hazard to people near it), or freezing a person (in which case, it depends on the thermal conductivity of their armor but most likely it has no effect on a tactical scale other than maybe causing the armor to turn brittle).

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Whats the most likely candidate of chemicals we could put in a bomb that would freeze a cubic meter of water in a second, with the aid of superscience?

Canonically? Ice-9.

[The Colonel]

With superscience, you might be better off with some kind of device that sucks energy out of the environment and dumps it into hyper (or hypo?) space - it will hoover up all kinds of free energy, but might be optimisable for certain wavelengths. Sort of like an Anti-light in infrared.

[starslayer]

A massive arragement of super-conducting ribbons connected to a thermally massive superconducting core held at near absolute zero.

The explosive force disperses the ribbons through the water, and they conduct heat to the core very quickly chilling the object.

As mentioned 2mm is about the best penetration you can achieve in 1sec, so the ribbons will need to be spaced no more than 4mm apart at the furthest out.

To a living target the freezing would probably be largely irrelevant to the 'being shredded via hundreds of nano-thin razor lines', and if all you want to do is shred targets with hundreds of nano-thin razor lines, why bother with the complexity of the superconducting cable and heat-sink. So these would be less effective weapons and would have to be used for some sort of utility purpose (they might make great devices for building dams against flooding while more permanent fortifications are placed behind- they would also be good for fire suppression)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

With superscience...

It becomes an issue of what superscience you use. I'd probably handwave something to do with laser cooling to have a 'reverse microwave oven' effect. It's physical nonsense, of course, but that's Superscience for you. Stats-wise, find an appropriate TL energy weapon and change its damage type to Burning (Cold), where the (Cold) damage type means it doesn't start fires but does cause stuff to freeze.

[Blood Legend]

I like the ribbons and laser cooling. My setting is a feudal future science fantasy so any high tech gadgets are likely for mundane purposes more than military. Instant snow or quick ice dams were likely the original purpose of these things, but cranked to eleven.

How much heat would a half pound of (near) absolute zero material absorb before it reached room temperature in 70° weather?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

How much heat would a half pound of (near) absolute zero material absorb before it reached room temperature in 70° weather?

Depends what it's made of, but not all that much; if you tossed it in water you're looking at maybe a pound of ice.

[Blood Legend]

So the core is probably designed to absorb a lot more heat than just stopping at room temperature.

For a sphere of half air, half dirt, 3 meters in diameter at room temperature reduced to at least freezing, how hot would that half pound of material get?