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:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3144/
I have seen photographs of this, but have never seen it in person. I wonder what special conditions are necessary for this to happen?
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.
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).
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
It was trying to give you a present.
Clearly. And I took it with grace and added it to my rum.