What causes ice to freeze with ice spikes shooting up out of it.

168 views

I wish I could share a picture.

My ice cube tray made ice with thin spires of ice shooting up out of it?

What which craft is this?

In: 3

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

They’re called Ice Spikes and [there’s a whole wikipedia page about it.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_spike)

Basically:

* The top of water freezes first (because that’s what’s exposed to the freezer, plus ice floats on liquid water), EXCEPT
* Water expands as it freezes

So the surface gets almost completely frozen over, and then as the inside of the cube starts to freeze, the expansion has nowhere to go except out the remaining hole in the ice on the surface. So it forces water up and out the small hole, where of course it cools and freezes, generating the spike.

You are viewing 1 out of 2 answers, click here to view all answers.