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Hi Ethan, I am not a linguist of Greek or even of English but I would assume that the term "cryo-cooling" is advocated not by DRD but by the people who want to distinguish between cooling down to *cryogenic* temperatures and say, cooling from 25 C to 4 C. Cheers, N. On 11/15/2012 12:45 PM, Ethan Merritt wrote: > On Thursday, November 15, 2012 10:14:54 am Raji Edayathumangalam wrote: >> Hi Sebastiano, >> >> Elspeth Garman howls bloody murder everytime someone says they "froze" >> their crystals. I think her issue is with the description of the process of >> successfully flashcooling crystals in the presence of cryoprotectants as >> "freezing." Freezing technically is understood to imply the formation of >> hexagonal ice > Not according to common English usage or any of the dictionaries I > looked in. > E.g. American Heritage Dictionary: > Freeze 1.a. To pass from the liquid to the solid state by loss of heat. > > It needn't refer to water at all, although that is the most common context. > You can find instructions for freezing olive oil to preserve it; > when I lived in Madison one occassionally had to worry about frozen > engine oil; a headline from earlier this year claimed > "Russian rivers clogged with frozen oil". > >> while what one really means is the successful solidification >> of water in a random orientation (vitrification) and the prevention of the >> hexagonal ice. >> >> Semantics semantics! >> >> I'd stick with flashcooled or something along those lines. >> Raji > Funny you should say that :-) > While I have never had a referred complain about "frozen" crystals, > I have had several complain that "flash cooling" is different from > "immersing in liquid nitrogen". I never figured out what they had > in mind, but have since tried to avoid the term flash cooling. > > By the way, "cryo-cooled" must be a term advocated by > The Department of Redundancy Department. > "cryo" - From Greek kruos, icy cold > > Ethan > -- Ruslan Sanishvili (Nukri) Macromolecular Crystallographer GM/CA@APS X-ray Science Division, ANL 9700 S. Cass Ave. Argonne, IL 60439 Tel: (630)252-0665 Fax: (630)252-0667 [log in to unmask]