2 Responses to “Ice Prick”

1. Sascha Says:
   September 5th, 2007 at 8:17 pm

   I’ve seen these. I wonder if it’s caused by the shell freezing first and the liquid inside being squeezed out under pressure ?

   Can you freeze a video camera??

2. neonjohn Says:
   September 5th, 2007 at 10:14 pm

   >I’ve seen these. I wonder if it’s caused by the shell freezing first and the liquid inside being squeezed out under pressure ?

   —

   Undoubtedly. The question is, what causes the long slender spike?

   There is fairly high velocity cold air from the evaporator impinging on this area. The flow is from the foreground and across the tray and then toward the rear. The disturbance of the surfaces of the adjacent cubes from the air turbulence is visible in the photos.

   I know from casual observation that the top freezes over before the sides. As freezing progresses towards the center, I’d expect water to be squeezed up – path of least resistance – but I haven’t figured out what makes the long spike.

   ——
   >Can you freeze a video camera??
   ——

   Probably not, but I have some fairly high res miniature color CCD cameras that would withstand the environment. That and a 5 watt Luxeon white LED light source might make a slick setup for recording this.

   The major problem is that this phenomena happens so rarely that I’d end up doing a LOT of recording. I don’t have a DVR or other digital recorder so it’d have to be analog VCR technology. Maybe that’ll make a nice winter project :-)

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