Category: experiments
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Using Salt Walter as an Insulator to Make Clear Ice
This blog post is a continuation of this experiment. In this experiment, I wanted to test out another way to insulate an ice cube tray to make clear ice. Inspired by a comment from another blog entry by a reader named Gael, I decided to try salt water as an insulator rather than just plain…
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Making Clear Ice Without a Cooler
In a set of experiments, I showed that you can make clear ice by controling the direction of freezing. The container I've been using for this is an Igloo cooler. When using it, the ice freezes from the top-down and all the cloudiness in the ice forms at the bottom of the container rather than…
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A Homemade Giant, Crystal Clear Ice Cube Tray
As you're probably aware, I've been dabbling in experiments making clear ice at home. [update: An organized index of ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.] The way I've found that works best is to freeze ice in an Igloo cooler with the top off. (Please read the post before you tell me to boil…
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Curing Olives at Home, Part II
This post is a continuation of this one on how to brine olives at home. My olives went from this: To this: To see the process, keep reading by selecting the link below.
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Brining Olives at Home
Don’t wait until December to buy fresh olives to brine at home, because that’s late in the season. This is the first of a series of blog posts on curing olives in brine solution at home.
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Is Faster Frozen Ice Less Cloudy than Slower Frozen Ice?
In this ice experiment, I compare large blocks of ice frozen at the highest and lowest freezer temperatures to see which is more clear vs. cloudy.
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Fun with Sugarcane
I bought a stalk of sugarcane at the farmer’s market and tried to extract the juice from it at home. It’s not easy!
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Does Distilled Water Freeze Clearer than Tap Water?
In my last set of icesperiments, I froze, melted, and refroze (tap) water to see if it became clearer on successive refreezings. It did not. This time I compared tap water with distilled water to see if one would freeze more clearly than the other. I froze it, then melted and refroze it four more…
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Does Refreezing Ice Make it Clearer?
I am trying a series of experiments to find the best and most practical way to make clear ice in my home freezer. Future experiments include distilled vs. tap water, boiled vs. not boiled, hot vs. cold water, different shapes of containers, etc. For this experiment, I started with plain tap water. I then froze…