Category: ice

I did a new ice thing. 

I found online these Roks Silicone Ice Cube Tray Inserts, which press shapes, numbers, letters, etc into ice cubes. However, the trays they sell with them make cloudy ice. [note: looks like they're no longer on Amazon but here's their homepage.]

So I put them on top of my IceOlogy trays facing down so that it would press the pattern into the top of the clear cubes using directional freezing.

This would probably also work with trays like the Ghost Ice System and Clearly Frozen tray. 

This left a nice deep impression. 

 

Then to fill the impression, I put some cranberry juice in the freezer for about 20 minutes until it was nearly freezing. I tried this once before with fridge-temperature juice and it melted the shape, so it's important for it to be super cold. 

After it had frozen, I found it had barely overfilled the top of the cube so I melted it off by pressing it against a thaw plate. 

It came out very nice, don't you think? 

The index of all the work on ice on Alcademics is here. 

 

I recently bought some ice cube trays from W&P Design. They have some funky new ones in blingy cubes and a star shape: 

But of course if you just fill them with water and freeze them normally they'll come out all cloudy and ugly: 

So I had planned to freeze them atop a Thermos Funtainer like I do spheres, as I show in this post.  

So I did that, but on top of my IceOlogy tray: 

 

But I was thwarted, by a design feature – They have tiny holes near the top of the trays. This would be a feature when freezing regularly so that when the water expands into ice it doesn't push the mold apart. 

But when you place these upside-down atop a thermos, the water runs out the holes. 

 

The resulting cubes were less than half full. So I taped over it in the square mold. 

In the star mold, I was able to push the tray down to the level of the hold in my thermos. I used a Yeti thermos for the square mold this time. 

They're not perfect but the round one is MUCH better – see a video of it here. The square one is hard to get out of its tray in any case. 

For the index of ice work here on Alcademics, follow this link.

 

 

I decided to measure the rate of freezing of an ice block in my (pretty crappy) freezer at home. It's just a standard apartment freezer. 

For all four times, I began with the same set of parameters:

• Igloo Legend 12 cooler
• 6 liters of cold tap water (this fills up the cooler a little more than halfway), in the freezer with the top off 

This is the typical set-up to make crystal clear ice slabs via directional freezing. 

Then I froze the water for 24 or 48 hours, setting the temperature on the coldest of warmest setting. 

I kept checking what those temperatures were, and found that there was a huge variation of temperature when set on setting.

• Warmest setting = 0F to 11F, average about 5F (-17C to -11C, average -15C)
• Coldest setting = -15F to 10F, average about 0 to -5F (-26C to -12C, average -17C to 21C)

The rates were

Temperature Setting	Length of Time	Thickness (cm)
Warmest	24 hours	2 – 2.25
Warmest	48 hours	5.75 – 6.5
Coldest	24 hours	2.5 to 3
Coldest	48 hours	8.5

 

So if I want to make a slab of ice that is a little more than 2 inches thick, I can fill a cooler to 6L and leave it in for 2 days at the warmest setting. For me, this is ideal thickness to make big ice cubes. 

What is interesting here is that leaving the water in the freezer for double the length of time more than doubles the thickness of the slab, while we'd expect the rate of freezing to slow down. There is extra energy required to cool down the water to freezing temperature before it begins freezing, but most of the energy used should be in converting the water to ice. Perhaps this has to do with the insulated container, that cooling from one direction only is more energy intense than from all sides. Makes sense to me. 

Maybe I'll try 3 days to see how thick it gets. 

 

Years ago I learned how to cut up slabs of ice using only an ice pick, but boy have I improved my technique since then. 

But the method is the same: 

• Fill a cooler with water and put it in the freezer with the top off.
• After a couple days pull it out and dump out the unfrozen water. You'll have just a clear slab.
• Wait for it to temper before cutting.
• With a bread knife or an ice pick, score a line across the surface.
• Set the knife across the surface in the groove, or put the ice pick in the center of the line.
• With a mallet or muddler or hammer or (in my case the back of another ice pick) whack the knife or ice pick.
• The ice should split into two.
• Repeat, cutting the block in half each time – I think it's easier/less prone to splitting unevenly than trying to cut a cube off the side. 

Here are some new pictures I took: 

All of the ice posts can be found at the Index of Ice Experiments. 

I decided to try to make shot glasses out of ice slabs made in a cooler. I froze water, cut it into big cubes and then bought a 1.5 inch drill bit. 

I was surprised to find how easy it was after that. I drilled a hole in the middle of each. Then, knowing that with the huge amount of room outside the hole it would be impossible to actually drink a shot out of them without spilling it everywhere, I decided to chop off some of the side of each cube with a big knife.

Oddly, though I've been making shapes with ice blocks for a decade, I don't think I've ever tried to carve it with a knife. Turns out it's super easy. 

So these will make shot glasses and/or votive candle holders. 

Over on my Instagram account, I posted a lot of pictures of goofy ice projects for Halloween. I realized I should also share them here on the blog for posterity. This is one of several posts. All my 10+ years of ice posts are here. 

I bought a bunch of silly junk at the Halloween store and froze it into ice blocks. On this post there are pics of a magic wand and a plastic rat that I froze. 

Over on my Instagram account, I posted a lot of pictures of goofy ice projects for Halloween. I realized I should also share them here on the blog for posterity. This is one of several posts. All my 10+ years of ice posts are here. 

I bought some small plastic skeletons and spiders at the Halloween store and frozen them into cubes, mostly using the Ghost Ice system or the Clearly Frozen tray (see recommended trays by following link above). Oh and it's hard to tell but the last spider pic is of a giant plastic spider I froze into an ice block using a cooler. 

 

Over on my Instagram account, I posted a lot of pictures of goofy ice projects for Halloween. I realized I should also share them here on the blog for posterity. This is one of several posts. All my 10+ years of ice posts are here. 

These pictures are of various eyes I scored from a few stores. There are eyes on ping pong balls (that float), rubber ball eyes (that sink), and some flat googly eyes. 

Over on my Instagram account, I posted a lot of pictures of goofy ice projects for Halloween. I realized I should also share them here on the blog for posterity. This is one of several posts. All my 10+ years of ice posts are here. 

I bought a few masks at the Halloween store, including a plague doctor mask. I then frozen them in an ice block and let them melt.