Cockeyed.com
Science Club
  1. Does Black Bark Mulch Help Keep Moisture in the Soil?
  2. How Much Water does a Fountain Use?
  3. Find your Body Surface Area
  4. How Fast do French Fries Cool Down?
  5. My Year of Coincidences
  6. Which Firework is the Loudest?
  7. Cost to store a VHS tape in a NYC apartment?
  8. Guess Your Blood Alcohol Level Booth
  9. Find the Loudest Restaurant in Sacramento
  10. How Much do Clothes Weigh?
  11. Trying to Make Clear Ice
  12. Searching the Indian Ocean for a Plane Crash
  13. Electronic Cigarettes - The Fog Machine for Your Face
  14. Scott Leased an Electric Ford Focus
  15. Testing the Effectiveness of a Beer Cozy
  16. Eggshells vs. Taco Shells
  17. How Ice Rinks are Made
  18. Shaken vs. Stirred
  19. Real Appliance Energy Use Tests
  20. Christmas Lights Power Cost
  21. The Best Cold Drink Cup
  22. LED vs. Regular Bulbs & CFLs
  23. Coldest drink in town?
  24. Using Salt to Cool Down Beer
  25. Coors Light Cold Indicator
  26. The Fastest Way to Cool Down Beer
  27. Hairdryer vs. Bowl of Water
  28. Bathroom During a Movie?
  29. Video Projector on a Disco Ball
  30. Cool Trunk
  31. The weight of popcorn
  32. Sunchips bag decomposition
  33. Disscating a cockroach
  34. Sensefly Drone Camera
  35. Entrance Locked
  36. End Rubbernecking
  37. Eyeclops Night Vision
  38. Miracle Fruit Taste Test
  39. Hot Air Bubbles
  40. Helium Bubbles
  41. Neighborhood Speed Trap
  42. Pizza Race
  43. Eyeclops - Bionic Magnifier
  44. Breathalyzer Testing
  45. Fishing Line Fiberoptics
  46. The Value of CFL Bulbs
  47. Barry Marshall Fan Page
  48. Bottling the Keg Leftovers
  49. Spinning Rim Centrifuge
  50. Backwash Experiments
  51. sidewalk chalk
  52. Red Hot Vioxx Action!
  53. Balloon Delivery
  54. Tanning
  55. Making a Candle Out of Lipstick
  56. Evaporation
  57. The lift of a Helium Balloon
  58. Lard Candle
  59. The Properties of Heat Transfer
  60. Insulation Testing
  61. Eating Out
  62. Eating In
  63. Tattoo Removal
  64. Drying Laundry
  65. Viscosity Testing
  66. Magazine Advertising
  67. Collecting Data
  68. Dropping Toast
  69. Refilling an Ink Cartridge
  70. Tampons
  71. Light Bulbs


























Cockeyed.com

How much is Inside?
Pranks!
Community & Citizenship
Height Weight Chart
Science Club
Incredible Stuff
How To Guides
Travel

About
Contact

Trying to Make Clear Ice - page 4

The plastic bottle degassing didn't work. The ice was still distorted with a mass of frozen air bubbles.

The next thing I tried was to disturb the surface of the water with a rotating paddle as it cooled. This might stop the ice from freezing over the surface.

I borrowed the battery-powered disco-ball motor from Thunder Mountain (part of the Disneyland Costume). This is a slow motor, rotating about 10 times per minute. I added some paddles made of scotch tape.

The blades would sweep constantly through the water, moving it around and breaking up top ice that might form.

After a few hours, ice started forming on the wings. It was apparent that this wasn't going to work.

The ice looked interesting, but the surface did eventually freeze, trapping air below and giving a clouded result.

My next idea was to keep the good ice around the edges, and remove by surgery the center water reservoir. I let a bowl of water freeze a bit, then sliced open the top with a serrated knife.

At this point in the freezing process, clear solid ice had formed along the edges of the bowl. I poured out the remaining water and replaced it with a new batch of distilled water. If I did this several times, maybe I could work my way to an entire a whole bowl of clear ice.

The first two rounds of puncturing and refreezing worked pretty well.

Unfortunately, I fell asleep and neglected to replace the water a third time. The center of the ice froze up solid, trapping gas and expanding outward just a bit. This might be worth repeating.

Around this time, I started to search around looking at experiments that other people had done to get clear ice. I prefer to invent solutions myself, but I had been trying for more than a month, and I was ready for some external input.

The first thing I noticed was that a few sources had mentioned that the pursuit of clear ice is easier with a warmer freezer. That is, a freezer which is -1° C is better for making clear ice than a freezer at -20° C.

Some sites even recommended buying a little dorm fridge to make ice in that freezer, because it would be more likely to be only a few degrees below zero.

With this in mind, I raised the temperature of my freezer at home before continuing my experiments.

The next thing I read was a cool work-around to the trapped air problem.

This guy Craig Belon realized that he could avoid trapping air and impurities in his ice by establishing two distinct sections of ice. He suspended a ball-shaped ice mold above a big pot of water. The ice mold would be exposed to the cold air in the freezer, but a small hole at the bottom would keep a path open to provide an exit for the gasses and expansion. The pot would be a heat sink for the ice ball.

I don't have an ice ball mold, so I tried just using a ping-pong ball with a hole poked into it. The ball has to be filled with water and then suspended above the water, with it's fill hole beneath the surface.

 

Please Read Page 5 of Making Clear Ice >

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6


 

Cockeyed.com on Facebook Cockerham on Twitter C K Rob Cockerham on Linkedin Rob Cockerham on G+

The Quest for a solid ice beer tray   Heat Transfer Experiments   Eyeclops Digital Magnifier   Trying to make hot air bubbles   Eyeclops Night Vision goggles   How to Eliminate Rubbernecking   My Homemade Speed Trap 
  • Photographic Height/Weight Chart
  • The Weight of Clothing
  • The Television Commercial Database

  • Cockeyed home page | Contact | Terms and Conditions | Updated January 27, 2014  Copyright 2014 Cockeyed.com