This is a great example of "what happens at the edge". It's predictable but no one predicts it because no one considers it.
Reminds me of the John Carmack quote someone added on another discussion yesterday: "A large fraction of the flaws in software development are due to programmers not fully understanding all the possible states their code may execute in."
Also reminds me of a line from a book (I can't remember which one), that was quoting an NSA representative in a meeting saying something along the lines of "our business is in the gaps between systems". My memory / interpretation taking it as: where one process ends and another one begins - that's where there's ambiguity, wiggle room, it's not process A's problem now, but it's not yet process B's problem, so what can we do to get in there and "make the ice spike".
The interesting things happen at the edges (in this case it's the middle, but that's missing the point).
So happy to have this small mystery solved. I lived in SE Asia for years where we avoided the local tap water, including for ice at home.
My kids and I observed these ice spikes every morning when I took out the trays to for iced coffees, and I always wondered why I'd never seen them anywhere else in the world.
It's almost a nice retroactive confirmation that the water delivery service we relied on was selling distilled water as advertised!
You shouldn’t drink distilled water. It’s devoid of minerals so when you drink it, the distilled water sucks minerals from your body to equalise which can cause issues.
"Since distilled water doesn’t contain its own minerals, it has a tendency to pull them from whatever it touches to maintain a balance. So when you drink distilled water, it may pull small amounts of minerals from your body, including from your teeth."
But that it could be a problem. So its not a myth, that it is demineralizing your body. Its a small effect - but its there, and it could have a negative effect on the body.
I also live in SEA. While distilled water is pretty popular (gaining more popularity these days), spring waters are even more popular and widely available (also tastes better IMO).
"The graphs on this page were produced by Kevin Lui (right), a undergraduate student at Caltech who spent a summer growing thousands of ice cubes to investigate the physics behind ice spike formation."
I neglected to take a picture of it before picking it up, but I found one of these growing out of a neighbors yard. It had picked up a little baby plant that was frozen in the top. I have seen a lot of crazy ice formations but never this, thanks for solving the mystery (I think)!
Ooooooh, that's what that is. I always thought something was dripping from a shelf above and forming an icy stalagmite, but I could never figure it out.
Reminds me of the John Carmack quote someone added on another discussion yesterday: "A large fraction of the flaws in software development are due to programmers not fully understanding all the possible states their code may execute in."
Also reminds me of a line from a book (I can't remember which one), that was quoting an NSA representative in a meeting saying something along the lines of "our business is in the gaps between systems". My memory / interpretation taking it as: where one process ends and another one begins - that's where there's ambiguity, wiggle room, it's not process A's problem now, but it's not yet process B's problem, so what can we do to get in there and "make the ice spike".
The interesting things happen at the edges (in this case it's the middle, but that's missing the point).