Ice is the solid state of water, which is the form found at the lowest temperature. It is linked to steam - the gaseous form of water, and the liquid form of water, which is known as... well... water.

How is Ice used?

Ice can be used many different ways, whether it be for science or for our personal enjoyment. Many areas of civilisation need ice and many others must contend with it.

Use with Refreshments

Drinks - Ice, being quite cold (compared to the average global temperature of 9°C) is often used to cool drinks. Indeed one very early use of ice was to cool drinks in warm weather. Today almost any fizzy soft drink comes with the offer of ice, and in hotter countries most drinks will be cooled using ice cubes.

Puddings - Ice is used in a whole range of puddings, either for its cooling capability or as a base for flavours. Some of these recipes are simplicity itself, such as using snow mixed with berry juice¹ to create a snow cone². These are very common in America, but variants have been known for centuries in the Far East and civilisations around the Mediterranean. The Victorians were very fond of using ice to create puddings of all sorts. One example would be the Nesselrode Pudding, made from: chestnuts, vanilla, eggs and, of course, ice. This complicated pudding was beloved by Victorians for its refreshing taste and was a sign of wealth and class. A full recipe can be found at the Historic food website. The pudding is named after Count Nesselrode who was a patron of the culinary arts and had many dishes named after him.

Recreation

Ice can be used for recreational purposes as well. Here is an example of the more intensive side of using ice for amusement as well as an example of using ice to show humanity's refinement. There is also a third example to show that both can be combined together.

Ice Hockey Considered by much of the world to be the most violent team sport in existence, ice hockey is by no means a weak man's³ sport. With six players per side, all of them carrying clubs⁴, it carries a hefty risk of injury. The whole game must be played on ice, while wearing ice skates and moving at up to 20mph.

Ice Sculpting One of the media used by sculptors is ice. Unlike clay it has a high chance of shattering while being worked upon. It can be crafted by either hard implements or by application of heat, which gives a greater ability for sculptors to add texture to their work. By far the most common form of ice sculptures is the ice swan, seen in ice palaces or wherever someone wants to add a touch of elegance, although adding an ice swan is no sign of elegance.

Ice Skating When ice skating is mentioned most people's minds link straight to Torvill and Dean.
This famous pair won a gold medal at the Sarajevo Olympics with an outstanding combination of flair and artistic perfection. That ice skating can be dramatic is often questioned until skaters achieve flips while gliding through the air. Less often questioned is the way that ice skating adds to the world's culture. Ice skating bears many similarities to ballet and indeed other dance forms as well. Those of an artistic nature have called it poetry in motion.

Ice Accommodation

Ice being used as a building material has several advantages albeit with many disadvantages as well. Here is the basic functional igloo, the sublime architectural masterpiece of the Jukkasjarvi icehotel and as a last resort, a snow shelter.

The Igloo Used for millenia by the Inuit and other extreme Northern people the igloo provides a warm space that also keeps out the freezing winds. They are normally built in a half sphere as it has the strongest shape and allows the wind to flow around it. The ice is simply cut into slightly curving blocks and built in a spiral until the top is reached. At that stage the person inside⁵ must cut the entrance/exit.

The Icehotel In Sweden there is the Jukkasjarvi icehotel constructed entirely (surprise, surprise) from ice. Around 4,000m³, it is constructed from 30,000m³ of river ice. Hundreds of builders form the strangest temporary structure in the world that now boasts its own bar and ice church. This advanced ice hotel is not to be confused with ice-houses, which were first used in 2000 BC in Mesopotamia, sometimes known as the cradle of civilisation. These sprung up in warm climates where there was a supply of ice that was reasonably close.

A Snow Shelter If the worst happens and you are caught outside and you haven't made the obvious precautions of packing a tent or carrying flares, or if you're very unlucky and have been caught in some kind of natural disaster⁶ then you will need to dig a snow shelter. Dig a large pit with around 30° sides. Then dig a one metre entrance tunnel around one metre wide. The walls of a good snow shelter should be at least 60 cm thick, however be warned, making a decent snow cave can take several hours so if in imminent danger there are better things you can do with your time.

How Ice Allows Humanity to Exist

Ice and its other forms of water and steam have some attributes that are incredibly strange. H₂O behaves like no other compound or element on the planet. Its closest chemical equivalents have boiling temperatures of -70°C. This would mean that all water on Earth should have long ago boiled away, leaving Earth as a very salty desert.

By far the strangest property of water is how it behaves when frozen. No one is surprised when we see ice floating on lakes and rivers and yet most other substances become denser when they freeze. Water does not follow this normal pattern of affairs however, when a liquid it has a density of 1 g/cm^3 and ice has a density of around 0.9 g/cm^3⁷. If ice sank to the bottoms of rivers and lakes as it froze, then the freezing would continue until all the river or lake was frozen solid, killing all life within it. Instead, the frozen ice forms an insulating layer on the surface and protects the life below it.

The strange properties are due to hydrogen bonding; other compounds also undergo hydrogen bonding with other strange effects such as hydroxide compounds. Hydrogen bonds are the strongest intermolecular force to be found in nature; because of the power of the bonds, water's boiling point is nearly 200°C higher than it would otherwise be.

Ice's chemical properties are very strange, not just slightly different from water's, as you might expect. Examples of this are all around us but the most beautiful would have to be the humble snowflake. Despite the commonly held that it is a misconception, it is possible for snowflakes to form identically although some simple forms do have duplicates.

What is the Freezing Point of water, to become ice?

As humanity uses different temperature scales but drinks the same water here are a few of the scales and the temperatures where ice becomes water.

These temperatures are for pure water with no impurities. Freezing/melting temperatures are all stated for a standard pressure, but whereas boiling points are greatly dependent on pressure, freezing and melting point are hardly affected by it.

One other important fact is that water can be cooled to considerably under 0°c as long as there are no nucleation sites for the ice to begin forming. When the temperature drops low enough then water will freeze anyway and do so extremely quickly.

Problems With Ice

Ice causes incalculable problems around the world. These can be separated into: life threatening, problematic and merely irritating. Here are a few of the problems ice causes for each.

Life-threatening Dangers of Ice

Ice causes an enormous amount of deaths each year, and has done so for millennia and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Here are the three biggest dangers that ice causes and ways to minimise the risk, assuming that you plan to do any of these things at all.

• Avalanches, unsurprisingly these enormous slides of mountain snow are the biggest risk that ice poses. Avalanches are set off by either:the climber, a warming or an extreme cooling. Climbers can be crushed by hundreds of tonnes of snow and ice which can then set like granite, thereby hampering rescue efforts. The easiest way to avoid avalanches is not to cross weak snow, often indicated by creaking or a hollow feel when stepped on. For more advice about avoiding avalanches try here.

• Crevasses are vertical cracks in the ice which are often covered by a very thin layer of ice. Beneath the thin crust of ice is often a large plummet, as if a creme brulee was only the sugar. Often it isn't the fall that causes death but the greater problem of being stuck inside. Obviously this last problem is less problematic if you are part of a large group with ropes. Even on your own it could be fixed with a)an improvised grappling hook⁸ or b) a couple of ice axes. Better yet is to avoid the crevasse entirely; test all the ground in front of you with a ski pole, always testing it under a good amount of weight.

• One more problem is not actually caused by the ice's existence but by it being too thin. In many Northern countries⁹ truckers make long voyages long voyages driving solely on ice floating on top of lakes in order to deliver cargos. Convoys with upto 50 trucks drive through the night over ice of varying thickness. Sometimes the ice is too thin and trucks plunge through the ice, and all too often the drivers cannot get out in time. If you cannot avoid driving over thin ice then the only real precautions you can take are to not wear a seatbelt and leave the door open in order to be able to bail out quickly, another important requirement is to be friends with the other truckers so that they stop to help you.

• Icebergs are the most well known problem of ice. Still extremly dangerous to ships across the world the most famous incident with an iceberg is the sinking of the Titanic in which 1,500 souls perished. Icebergs are normally found just after the thawing of polar ice. They can drift a considerable distance before melting, posing a risk to ships below the Artic Circle.

Dangerous and Problematic Issues with Ice

As well as the numerous fatalities caused by ice there are other areas where ice causes considerable financial loss and a steady stream of injuries, a few of which can be fatal.

• Icy roads are the bane of almost any country not on the equator. Enormous amounts of money are spent on machines and grit to keep the roads clear of ice. Despite this, transport is slowed to a snail's crawl and many cars end up off the road. Icy Roads are primarily a problem with occasional snow fall and freezing temperatures as it isn't worth the upkeep to maintain large numbers of gritters. To minimise these effects always equip your car with snow wheels. If snow wheels are impractical then snow chains can be used and are less expensive while practical in countries such as the UK where winters are less severe. In the worst cases it can be helpful to carry some supplies such as food, water and lights in your car in case you need to camp out.
  While icy roads can be dealt with quite easily it is a far greater problem when covered in black ice. Black ice is near invisible so drivers cannot see it before they start sliding. The primary method to deal with black ice is to have a good winter driving ability. To minimise your risks simply drive slow, keep a good distance from the cars around you and don't brake too hard. This should minimise the severity of any skids or crashes. For more help with this try to get some driving experience on skid pans, where drivers are taught how to deal with the most difficult conditions. Four by Fours generally only help in snow if the drivers are experienced in snow conditions.

• Ice buildup: a rather general term, it covers all the faults in machinery caused by ice buildup from operating in cold areas. Moving parts can jam and sensors can become inoperable. Computers rarely function at optimum levels in cold temperatures. The worst problem though is that of batteries. Batteries run for only a small fraction of their expected lifetimes when in very cold weather. Ice buildup only causes infrequent human problems (such as power cuts) but the financial strain is enormous. Little can be done about this except to try and insulate any machinery as far as possible and maintain redundancy in any crucial systems.

• Engine Icing is primarily a risk to plane engines. Water is sucked into the engines at which stage it freezes. Ice pellets are capable of damaging the blades of the engines, forcing them to shut down. If planes lose thrust due to engine shut down then the pilots are required to learn how to glide their planes very quickly. Normally this isn't a risk as engines rarely shut down simultaneously. The primary risk of this can be found on descent as there is less time to recover thrust and take appropiate actions.

• Erosion: ice dramatically increases the rate of erosion of cliffs where there is already impact weathering from waves. How, you ask? Well earlier you found out that water is less dense when it is solid, that means it takes up more room than when it is a liquid. Any water that gets into a crack in rock, and then freezes, expands and if there is insufficient room, shatters the rock. As such many coasts around the world are struggling to save their diminishing coast line. People who have their property on coasts are obviously most affected and lose much of their property. To stop this you will normally need the government to build sea defenses such as groynes and rip-rap. One possible way of helping yourself is to plant stabilising plants, such as kudzu which will slow the rate of erosion. This researcher and the BBC take no responsibility for the numerous problems that kudzu can cause, do not attempt it without speaking to a good botanist.

The Irritating Qualities of Ice




After listing all of the true dangers of ice you can now see some of the problems that you may well have encountered in life. Ice can just make life a little harder than it need be at times; whether we're trying to tame it for our use or just trying to carry on with our lives.

• Drink Ice; there are two major problems with ice cubes in drinks. A very frequent problem is being given ice cubes in drinks when unwanted. In this case they chill drinks and make a simple soft drink near impossible to drink. The solution is reasonably simple - take the ice out - but normally most people will simply grit their teeth and bear it. The other problem is when ice cubes have melted, after this drinks start to warm up. In addition to that the extra water released by the ice cube melting will have diluted your drink. Adding more ice cubes will cool it down but further dilute the drink, the only advice here is to finish your drink as soon as possible.

• Slippery pavements; who hasn't managed to slip and even fall when happening upon a strip of near frictionless pavement. Ice is to blame for the numerous cuts sustained by the world's populace. Solving the problem is normally quite simple, either grit the pavement as you would a road or take a different path.

• Stickyness; while strange at first sight anyone who has spent more than a day in ice will have seen someone stuck to a lamppost or something else metallic by their tongue, or even tried it themselves. This is because ice forms between the metal and your tongue. This researcher had the unpleasant experience of rowing in water that was only liquid because it was flowing. The oars stuck to our hands as we rowed and then when taking them back to the boathouse had to be sprayed with warm water as they froze to our hands, despite being made out of carbon fibre. To avoid, simply don't let skin touch frozen substances. To help yourself if you do get stuck pour hot water over your skin or wrap in a piece of clothing.

Ice therefore is shown to be critical to both the survival and destruction of Humanity, as well as our amusement. Humans have tried to force ice to our will for millennia and to a good extent have achieved our goal, and yet every day we our tricked by this close relation to the most common substance in our lives. It is also safe to say that final victory will go to the ice, especially if it comes in the form of the following.

Ice Ages

The first Ice age is believed to have occurred around 2.5 billion years ago. Another ice age occurred around 700 million years ago. Both of these completely covered the world in ice, making it nearly incapable of sustaining complicated life. We are currently in an interglacial period, where the world is much warmer and yet we are still in the midst of an ice age. It is believed that this period should last for at least another thousand years, however human greenhouse emissions are affecting all of these predictions, making future conditions far harder to predict. While at first glance these greenhouse emissions should be extending our expected peroid of warmness a rise in temperatures can actually cause Global dimming where the world cools. If another Ice age was to come, and humanity was not ready for it, the damage to our species would be catastrophic, and in the worst case - irrecoverable.

A Few Interesting Facts

Ice, like water makes a good substance for neutrino detection. To detect a neutrino you need millions of tonnes of a transparent substance. As the poles have lots of ice a project called IceCube has been built at a cost of 270 million dollars - per year. It monitors a volume of one cubic kilometer of ice, looking for high energy pulses produced when a neutrino collides with a molecule of ice. The team in control of the research can be found out about here.

A thin layer of ice covers what might be a liquid ocean on the moon Europa, if so then it could be protecting one of the few places in our solar system that could be capable of sustaining life. Due to this NASA has listed it high on places where they would like to send a rocket, and even more considerately - didn't dump a Jupiter orbiter's nuclear power plant onto the ice.

Something for the scientists reading this who weren't satisfied by the science given before. Ice has a number of forms it can take, depending on their different crystal structures. Most of these form under high pressure however and so are rarely seen by anyone outside a laboratory.

Some planets are believed to have ice near their centres - but at incredibly high temperatures. This is possible because under very high pressures the particles cannot move around, even if they are very energetic. This could allow planets to have ice, instead of metallic cores, although little proof has yet been found for ice within Jupiter or Saturn.

Appreciating Ice

Earth currently resides in a state of equilibrium, for the first time since the Earth formed we have ice caps at both poles while no snow falls on the equator. The glaciers contain the majority of all fresh water on Earth and feed many of the rivers that our ecology is based on. Were humanity to lose a considerable part of our glaciers, we would also lose a considerable part of our ecology and our fresh water supplies.Protecting the ice must be a crucial goal for humanity, primarily by the restriction of greenhouse emissions. Without ice there would be no more snow. No longer could children play in the streets with snowballs while the rest of the city is plunged into chaos by a mere 20cm of snowfall, at least in the UK.