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92 points

Dare someone smarter than me explain what the ever loving fuck is going on there?

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99 points
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This is what happens when some kind of new compound is formed between these two, here it’ll be series of sulfuric acid-water complexes. Same thing happens with metals when intermetallic compounds form, see titanium-nickel phase diagram. Normal case would be eutectic, see aluminum-silicon phase diagram

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28 points
26 points

I see. So these are actually many sulfuric compounds in a trenchcoat chart.

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16 points

Never mind between 80 and 90%, WTF is happening at 42.5%‽

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23 points

My uneducated understanding is that the chart shows at which temperatures sulfuric acid freezes depending on the concentration. Also in my very basic understanding of physics and chemistry I would have thought that it’s linear or exponential or something predictable and not that jumpy.

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18 points
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In normal cases you’d see two curves going away from pure compounds downwards to a common minimum, which is eutectic point. It’s generally only vaguely predictable, but always monotonic

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14 points

Sulfuric acid and water has various H2SO4 and H2O ratios. So like 1 H2SO4 and 6, 3, 2, or 1 H2O it also has just the H2SO4 and H2S2O7. These are present as local points within solutions and with different prominence depending on the amount of water added. These 8 different ratios each have different freezing points.

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If I had to guess, I would assume that there are different molecular lattices that sulfuric acid and water can form at different concentrations and that these different lattices have different freezing points. I will now go look it up.

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8 points

What you’re describing are different crystalline phases of pure compounds, but this does not give you new minima, you need some new compound to form for that

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4 points

Physics.

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