Alcademics

In the last installment of my ongoing adventures making clear ice at home in the freezer, I found that using a hard-sided Igloo cooler works pretty well to create large, mostly-clear blocks.

I was curious to see if faster frozen blocks (with the freezer turned to its maximum cold setting) would come out more or less cloudy/clear than blocks frozen at the minimum cold setting.

Of course, my freezer isn't exactly high-tech. According to my novelty jumping bass fish thermometer I picked up in Finland (thanks for the trip, Finlandia!), my freezer only ranges from -3.2 to 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Anyway, as you can see below, there wasn't much difference at all. Here's the block set on the warmest freezer setting (slowest to freeze):

And here at the coldest setting, which froze faster:

My finger (I should be hand model, right?) indicates where I'd cut the block to get rid of the too-cloudy ice. One was 12 cm and the other 12.5. At that difference, you may as well turn the thing all the way up and have your ice sooner.

More icesperiments to come!

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.