Title says it all really, the store brought ice is always very different. Why is this?
Edit: I know I’m a moron, bought*
In: Chemistry
Ice cubes all start as “clear” as they freeze (assuming clear water ofc), but they get cloudy due to the internal stress since ice cubes freeze from outside to inside. You can even see this yourself if you look at half-finished ice-cubes, as the ice is still (mostly) clear.
Industrial / professional ice cubes are made differently, for example by taking the ice out before it is entirely frozen:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUHcCHbgX_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUHcCHbgX_o)
Water has air dissolved in it. If you freeze it in your freezer, the outside freezes first, trapping the air in the middle. When the last of the water in the middle freezes the dissolved air is forced out, leaving a cloud of tiny bubbles in the ice.
The factory ice is frozen from the bottom up. There’s always a layer of liquid water at the top as the ice block grows from below, so no air is trapped inside.
[removed]
They use a different process to make ice more efficient and quickly. Instead of putting the water into a freezer and cooling it with air they spray/pour water directly on the coils of the freezer. This makes it form in a bunch of thin and quickly formed layers, instead of as one thick chunk which is frozen slowly over dozens of minutes.
When ice is formed in a big chunk it freezes from the outside in. So a layer on the outside forms, and then the inside of it is stopped from expanding and can’t push itself out, which makes a bunch of stress lines/fractures throughout the cube. This is also why ice cubes from your freezer will ‘pop’ or sometimes explode when it’s melting in your glass.
None of this happens when the ice is formed in layers from one direction because the water has room to expand.
Latest Answers