xkcd #3144: Phase Changes

xkcd #3144: Phase Changes

Title text:

People looking for the gaps in our understanding where the meaning of consciousness or free will might hide often turn to quantum uncertainty or infinite cosmologies, as if we don't have breathtakingly complex emergent phenomena right there in our freezers.

Transcript:

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Source: https://xkcd.com/3144/

explainxkcd for #3144

343 points · 23 comments · view on lemmy.world

23 Comments

sbv@sh.itjust.works · 44 pts · 357d

No, it's angry you didn't give it a little jacket, now it's very cold and angy, so it's trying to stab you.

DarkCloud@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 356d (6 replies)

Fuck that, ice comes in over 25 different structural types or phases, the most recently discovered was this year. We still don't know jack shit about jack shit:

https://enl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_ice#Known_phases

chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 356d (4 replies)

We recently figured out why ice is slippery. Normies make it seem like all that's left to learn is at the fringes, but it's not. Our gaps in knowledge are everywhere. Even you can be an explorer!

khornechips@sh.itjust.works · 18 pts · 356d (3 replies)

I assumed it was because of a thin water layer that makes you essentially hydroplane when you step on it, am I even close?

Edit: Yes, but also no.

chuckleslord@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 356d

More akin to marbles on a floor or a table shuffleboard setup!

GraniteM@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 356d

Great, who's going to go tell Richard Feynman?

grissino@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 356d

.

BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org · 14 pts · 356d
ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works · 29 pts · 356d (4 replies)

It reaches out

AliasVortex@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 356d (2 replies)

113 times a second

the_mighty_kracken@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 355d (1 reply)

Doors and corners

ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 355d

That's where they get you

HyperfocusSurfer@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 356d

About our extended car insurances

crt0o@discuss.tchncs.de · 25 pts · 356d (1 reply)

Reality: when water is cooled below 0 °C, it freezes... sometimes

wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 356d

Also, even if it does nucleate, it only freezes if enough heat is removed from it to allow for the phase change to occur.

ornery_chemist@mander.xyz · 14 pts · 356d

Me: you've been in the freezer for hours now, please freeze Supercooled water: how bout nah

Hupf@feddit.org · 8 pts · 356d

Amuletta@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 355d (5 replies)

I have seen photographs of this, but have never seen it in person. I wonder what special conditions are necessary for this to happen?

maxwellfire@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 355d

See here and here You need like a particular temperature and the ice crystals to grow with the right orientations from the edge inward and meet in a triangle in the middle.

Dasus@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 355d (2 replies)

I had a spike like protrusion in one of my icecubes from a regular ice cube tray you place in the freezer.

But couldn't tell you why though

ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 355d (1 reply)

It was trying to give you a present.

Dasus@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 355d

Clearly. And I took it with grace and added it to my rum.

TeddE@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 355d

My hypothesis is that the freezer motor has to be right at the freezing point and the tray has to have few nucleation points such that when a small spek of water freezes the phase change disperses enough heat to prevent them from immediately following suit, the small flake of ice then rises to the surface. As it continues to cool, further freezing is more likely to occur in the existing crystal. Through a combination of ice's buoyancy and the surface tension of liquid water, the crystal gets pushed upward compared to liquid water.

I wonder if the fridge motor's vibration plays any role on where the fingers form (due to resonance patterns).