refrigerator oddities

[darkoshi]

An unopened bag of chocolate chips which I had placed in my fridge several weeks ago has expanded as if inflated with gas.



This has never before happened with any other bags of chocolate chips.

A can of soda water did however expand yesterday... I assume it got too cold and partially froze. Why would being too cold make a bag of chocolate expand, though?

The bag remains inflated even after having taken it out of the fridge. I shall open the bag to see what lies inside...

Looks like chocolate. Tastes like chocolate.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

In most cases as objects get colder they contract and have higher densities since the kinetic energy of the individual molecules decrease and thus the intermolecular forces become relatively stronger and thus pull the structure together. But there are few cases where decrease in temperature actually yields a decrease in density, the most familiar of which is water. As water starts to freeze, it forms a crystalline structure created by hydrogen bonding, which actually places more distance between the molecules and thus results in a lower density, which is why ice floats on water. Thus, most objects contract as temperature decreases but there are exceptions (such as water) that do not follow this rule.

It seems that the air inside the bag should have condenced when cooled. Perhaps your chocolates are also an exception to the rule, or they contain a lot of water.

[(Anonymous)]

????Condensation happens when a gaseous substance (air) is cooled sufficiently to revert it back into a liquid state and then the condensation expands the bag????

[darkoshi]

I don't think that condensation would cause expansion of volume. I suppose if the outside air pressure dropped, that could explain it... but I don't understand why the bag remained puffed even after leaving it outside for a while. Maybe the chocolate itself gave off some kind of gas? Beats me.