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.
![](degassing_water13.jpg)
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.
![](motor_from_thunder_mountain.jpg)
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.
![](motor_over_ice.jpg)
The blades would sweep constantly through the water, moving it around and breaking up top ice that might form.
![](motor_freezing.jpg)
After a few hours, ice started forming on the wings. It was apparent that this wasn't going to work.
![](motor_ice14.jpg)
The ice looked interesting, but the surface did eventually freeze, trapping air below and giving a clouded result.
![](triangle_cut.jpg)
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.
![](triangle_cut_fill.jpg)
The first two rounds of puncturing and refreezing worked pretty well.
![](triangle_cut_fail15.jpg)
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.
![](wire_ball.jpg)
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.
![](wire_ball_poked.jpg)
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.
![](wire_ball_full.jpg)
Please Read Page 5 of Making Clear Ice >
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