Unruled Notebook

American Society of Mechanical Engineers every year publishes a heat transfer gallery of pictures, capturing some of the thermal curiosities of nature and related lab scale phenomena. The twelfth such gallery is published in the current Aug 2008 issue of the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer.

The purpose of the gallery as stated by Prof. Kenneth D. Kihm in his introduction to these entries [1]

[...] is to draw attention to the innovative features of optical diagnostic techniques and aesthetic qualities of thermal processes. To focus on visualization images and schematics, the text is kept to a minimum and further details should be found directly from the authors. My wish is that the journal readers enjoy viewing these collections, acquire knowledge of the state-of-the-art features, [...]

My objective for mentioning about the gallery here can be found in the disclaimer below.

Those who have access to the journal, take a look and enjoy. For other readers, I am reproducing here a scaled down version of a portion of one of the published entries related to cell freezing.

A brief explanation of the above image: Follow the sequence of numbers from 1 to 8 to understand the phenomenon (notice the pictures are not in sequence).

Cell freezing is useful in medicinal biology and physiology [3]. This sequence of pictures try to understand the phenomenon better by seeing how ice crystals damage (injures) the plasma membranes of the cell. For this purpose, the tissue of a leaf shown in (1) is used in this study. Using a high speed camera, a closer picture revealing the cell structure at the back side of the leaf is shown in (2), which is at 298 K. A slow freezing at the rate of -1 C/min is performed on the tissue and the rest of the pictures 3 to 8 show the state of the cell at different micro seconds into the freezing process. Observe how the ice crystals penetrate the cell in (5) and how finally the cell is dislocated (deformed) in 8 as compared to the location marked by white dashed lines in (3). This is attributed to intercellular freezing, which sets in after a while into the process (after picture (5)), which begins with extra cellular freezing. The study suggests one can measure the extent of cell damage by measuring the deformation during the freezing process.

Incidentally, the first author of the above work is Akemi Eguchi, an undergraduate student at the Kanagawa Institute of Technology, Japan.

To get a flavor of other heat transfer research, here are the published titles in the gallery:

• Pool Boiling on a Downward Facing Microheater Array Under the Influence of the Electric Fields
  C. Herman, Z. Liu, and J. Kim, J. Heat Transfer 130, 080901 (2008), DOI:10.1115/1.2937164
• Simultaneous Droplet Impingement Dynamics and Boiling Heat Transfer
  Jian Shen, Christof Graber, Deborah Pence, James Liburdy, and Vinod Narayanan, J. Heat Transfer 130, 080902 (2008), DOI:10.1115/1.2937176
• Short Time Impact and Cooling of Water Droplets Impinging on Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Surfaces
  A. Sanjeev, O Huzayyin, K. P. Gatne, R. M. Manglik, and M. A. Jog, J. Heat Transfer 130, 080903 (2008), DOI:10.1115/1.2937179
• Freezing Damage of the Plasma Membrane of a Plant Cell
  Akemi Eguchi, Akira Narumi, and Yasuhiro Iida, J. Heat Transfer 130, 080904 (2008), DOI:10.1115/1.2937184
• Air-Water Ebullience Systems: Visualizing Single Bubble to Wave Instability Signatures
  A. Subramani, M. A. Jog, and R. M. Manglik, J. Heat Transfer 130, 080905 (2008), DOI:10.1115/1.2937187
• Label-Free and Near-Field Mapping of Molecular Diffusion (Saline Solution/Water) Using Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) Refractive Index Field Imaging
  Il Tai Kim and Kenneth D. Kihm, J. Heat Transfer 130, 080906 (2008), DOI:10.1115/1.2937181
• Visualization of Pressure in Microchannels
  Derek Fultz and Jeffrey Allen, J. Heat Transfer 130, 080907 (2008), DOI:10.1115/1.2937182
• Temperature Effects on Swarming Flagellated Bacteria in Microfluidic Environments
  Edward B. Steager, Chang-Beom Kim, and Min Jun Kim, J. Heat Transfer 130, 080908 (2008), DOI:10.1115/1.2937185
• Flow Patterns During Convective Boiling in Microchannels
  T. Harirchian and S. V. Garimella, J. Heat Transfer 130, 080909 (2008), DOI:10.1115/1.2937174

References

[1] doi: 10.1115/1.2937158

[2] Eguchi, A., Narumi, A., & Iida, Y. (2008). Freezing Damage of the Plasma Membrane of a Plant Cell Journal of Heat Transfer, 130 (8) DOI: 10.1115/1.2937184

[3] see the wikipedia link for Cryopreservation for a rudimentary introduction (that page is not complete and authentic. But I am no expert either to correct it or write more here. Let me know if you find any good web source or paper.)