In case anyone is wondering about the difference between this ice and the ice you pull out of your freezer, this ice is totally clear because it has been formed into one single continuous crystal. It could form this because it was cooled from one particular point or side. In your freezer, the water is being cooled from all sides (and it has different levels of minerals and gases dissolved in it) that makes crystals start forming from multiple nucleation points. When many crystals form with crystal boundaries, light gets refracted across these boundaries and that's why it appears cloudy.
'Crystal clear' can sometimes be counterintuitive because apart from the case of single crystals, the more crystalline something is the more opaque it becomes. Glass is an amorphous polymer, the lack of crystals is what makes it transparent! And no, 'crystal' glassware does not have anything to do with crystals.
braille_animalia on February 17th, 2018 at 03:40 UTC »
It’s not clear. It’s got a picture of some dude on it.
FatherMellow on February 17th, 2018 at 09:16 UTC »
Now that's some high quality H2O.
plasticbaginthesea on February 17th, 2018 at 10:40 UTC »
In case anyone is wondering about the difference between this ice and the ice you pull out of your freezer, this ice is totally clear because it has been formed into one single continuous crystal. It could form this because it was cooled from one particular point or side. In your freezer, the water is being cooled from all sides (and it has different levels of minerals and gases dissolved in it) that makes crystals start forming from multiple nucleation points. When many crystals form with crystal boundaries, light gets refracted across these boundaries and that's why it appears cloudy.
'Crystal clear' can sometimes be counterintuitive because apart from the case of single crystals, the more crystalline something is the more opaque it becomes. Glass is an amorphous polymer, the lack of crystals is what makes it transparent! And no, 'crystal' glassware does not have anything to do with crystals.