The Tipsy Crow, San Diego, California.
Daniel writes:
I know you guys shock folks with drink prices in Dublin’s “cultural district”, here’s a receipt from San Diego’s “cultural district” (read tourist trap, rip-off district, high overheads area). $4.50 for ice?
Pierce Gleeson writes:
We encountered this cliff face of icicles walking in Glendalough [Co Wicklow] on Saturday. On the east face of Lugduff. Many of the icicles were eight or ten feet long. As we stood watching a few collapsed with booming cracking noises.
You’ll recall the plinky-ploinky frisson of Youtuber carsandwater’s red hot nickel ball dropped into a mug of water experiment.
Behold – a predictable and deeply satisfying sequel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcK9GZWUWqc
The cascade turns into a floating vertical column of ice crystals.
Wired quotes Chemistry Ph.D Joe Larsen of the Rockwell Science Centre in LA, who explains:
Some people claim that hot water freezes faster because a pot of boiling water can be thrown into the air on a cold winter day, and it freezes in mid air creating a shower of ice crystals. Whereas a pot of cold water thrown into the air comes down as large blobs of water. This happens because the hot water is so close to being steam, that the act of throwing it into the air causes it to break up into tiny droplets. (hot water is less viscous than cold water, listen to the sound it makes when you pour it in the sink) The small water droplets have a large surface area which allows for a great deal of evaporation, this removes heat quickly. And finally, the cooled droplets are so small, that they can be easily frozen by the winter air.
Now you know.
(Hat tip: James Dempsey)
The icy plumage of the Arctic ocean. Dr Martini at Deep Sea News explains:
Frost flowers form when newly formed ice sublimates, that is ice changes directly from a solid to a gas totally bypassing the liquid stage. Initially, the water vapor formed by sublimation is the same temperature as the sea ice, but gets quickly cooled by the cold air. The air is then becomes supersaturated with water vapor, which means the air has too water much in it. Air really doesn’t want to hold all that excess water vapor, so when the supersaturated air touches another ice crystal the water vapor quickly turns back into ice. This process is called nucleation, on little chunks of ice that are sticking up out of the water or even ice crystals floating in air. Over time, more and more crystals form on existing ice. The crystals expand outward in spiky arms, creating the little punks we know as frost flowers.
