You don't know ice. Neither do I, apparently

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice#Phases

by wetzeljohn • 12 years ago

13 11 12 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

CatsoCatsoCatso• 12 years ago

This article becomes especially interesting if you've read Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat's_Cradle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_nine (fictional material within Cat's Cradle)

yarper3• 12 years ago

I remember looking at this ages ago (I browse my share of wikipedia)

trying to work out why you couldn't use ice as a submarine hull. I mean the deeper you go the more freezes on it and the thicker it gets?

inb4 it floats, so does air

po2• 12 years ago

There is an extremely tough material made out of frozen water and sawdust called Pykrete: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete

There were some plans to make ships out of it and it seems that mythbusters did an episode on it which I haven't seen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2009_season)#Epis...

yarper3• 12 years ago

It's possibly that episode that triggered the submarine thought!

peeters• 12 years ago

I mean the deeper you go the more freezes on it and the thicker it gets?

As the article makes a point of mentioning, unlike nearly all materials, added pressure is more likely to melt ice than cause it to freeze, at least at the pressures and temperatures we're considering.

The pressure of water at 10000m (basically the deepest the oceans go) is ~100 MPa. Look at the liquid part of the phase diagram between 100 kPa and 100 MPa. See how it abnormally extends left as pressure increases to ~200 MPa?

yarper3• 12 years ago

No, I see that I mean if you have a cooling system of some kind you should see layers like in hail where more and more water freezes around it?

MattJ100• 12 years ago

Another fun ice fact is that hot water freezes faster than cold water: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/hot_water.html

judk2• 12 years ago

in some poorly-understood conditions

This factoid gets trotted about without ever noting the (tiny) magnitude of the effect, it just plants a (false) idea in the readers mind that you can get ice faster by microwaving water first.

judk2• 12 years ago

Mods, please fix title.

You don't know ice. Neither do I, apparently

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