It is my understanding that when ice cubes “shrink” in the freezer over time, it is due to sublimation. How does sublimation work exactly? What causes the change in state?
In: Chemistry
The other thing to add besides sublimation is that fridge/freezer combos basically always have a defrost cycle which activates a heating element behind the freezer to melt any ice that otherwise would build up in the freezer and need to be chipped or melted away. While ice in a cube tray will melt into the tray and refreeze, this increase in temperature and phase change increases the rate of evaporation.
If you have a freezer/fridge combo and a chest freezer do an experiment with ice cube trays. Fill them both up, put one in each freezer and leave it alone for a couple weeks and compare the two.
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