Can Northerners Explain Ice to a Southerner?

[Streetwise]

This topic sent me off to research ice harvesting in the Northeast. I found this great old photo of the Burlington waterfront:

I found several good articles, but this one is nice and compact:

Ice Harvesting at Billings Farm

Edited December 28, 2020 by Streetwise

[TheDukeAnumber1]

6 hours ago, Andy's Fish Den said:

Distilled water will make perfectly clear ice. There is an ice manufacturer where I grew up that makes the big blocks that are used in ice carving and they use distilled water to make the big blocks perfectly clear. They told me that the haze or cloudiness in ice is the impurities.

I've exclusively used distilled water for my ice and it's never clear. My own light reading on the topic leads me to believe that freezing from the bottom up or other techniques to control freezing rate will get you clear ice regardless of impurities.

I will say that making distilled water ice cubes can get interesting, a cube or two always forms ice spears that come out of the cube at a 45deg angle sometimes 1" long. I've read this is a common happening for distilled water.

@Daniel

Fluid dynamics AND changing states of matter... Most of us northerns practically understand ice but would be hard pressed to explain it 🙂

[Andy's Fish Den]

16 hours ago, TheDukeAnumber1 said:

I've exclusively used distilled water for my ice and it's never clear. My own light reading on the topic leads me to believe that freezing from the bottom up or other techniques to control freezing rate will get you clear ice regardless of impurities.

I will say that making distilled water ice cubes can get interesting, a cube or two always forms ice spears that come out of the cube at a 45deg angle sometimes 1" long. I've read this is a common happening for distilled water.

@Daniel

Fluid dynamics AND changing states of matter... Most of us northerns practically understand ice but would be hard pressed to explain it 🙂

I was just going off what the ice making people told me, I just know that the ice blocks we would get to carve were crystal clear. I've never made ice myself with distilled water. I'm sure there's also some secret to temperature and process as well.

[gardenman]

Do you know there are algae that live in and move through ice? They're called sea ice algae. When you hear people talking about how they know what the atmosphere was like centuries ago based on the composition of the air bubbles trapped in sea ice, ask them how they know no sea ice algae ever fed on those bubbles. Sea ice algae, like all algae, inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. Sea ice algae can move through invisible (to us) passages in the ice to find food, and I'm pretty sure they've found those bubbles at some point and altered their composition. As anyone keeping an aquarium knows, algae is everywhere. Assuming it never found a nutrient rich (to them anyway) air bubble is assuming a lot.

[Ben_RF]

Another fun little tid bit is that when ice melts there is a release of gas.  That is partly why most burst pipes occur in the winter when things begin to thaw.  This happens especially when it begins to thaw, refreeze, thaw, refreeze, etc. again. 

Edited December 29, 2020 by Ben_RF