Clear Ice

It’s Elementary-Right? Making a Perfectly Clear Ice Cube

Image by Christian Bickle fingalo via Wikimedia Commons.

Making ice is elementary right? The purely magical yet scientifically stable process of changing the state of matter is of course not new but still shape-shiftingly neat and we are still learning the basics, apparently.
So how about making a perfectly clear ice cube? It sounds pretty basic, almost like a harmless junior high school science class experiment, right? Yet it's not exactly basic or harmless.
In fact if you're thinking that you have certainly been able to make clear ice before now, it was quite likely a complete accident-just like all great scientific discoveries are made! Yet unless you are fully equipped with a lot of patience and endless free time with some assistance of using everyday household equipment -you too can achieve the pursuit of the perfect clear ice cube!

Clearly it’s Just an Ice Cube

'Ice Harp' Photo By Gscmusic at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons.

The story of 'why' may be equally as interesting as the process itself, so like most science teachers a tangent is included in this lesson on making perfectly clear ice. 

It all started with a guy named Rob Cockerham and a website he started back in 1998 B.G. (Before Google) called Cockeyed.com and it was more of an experiment than a masterpiece or collection of anything. Fast forward to the 21st century and Cockerham's site now occupies at least "800 megs on the internet", is working at Intel, and continues to ask simple questions and providing answers to the mass public as the first unofficial "life hacker" of sorts. 

If you ever wondered how much time a dishwasher actually saves versus hand washing, how to fix a gate or which disposable cup keeps cold drinks cold the longest, Cockeyed.com is a unique and unabashed resource. You may have even heard of his wildly popular series "How Much Is Inside?" which answers questions such as the number of glasses of wine in a regular bottle, how much lipstick is in a tube, etc.. Cockerham finds out the answers to these critical yet quirky questions (think of the $5 foot long scandal for Subway) and shares his discovery in this segment which has been ongoing since 1998!

Now back to clarity or purpose-the task of making perfectly clear ice.

Despite the flood of information on the internet claiming that absolutely anyone can make clear ice, Cockerham proves that the process is anything but as simple as boiling water.

The amateur scientist tried and noted numerous erroneous published claims that if you boil, cool, and re-boil water, the process removes the impurities which make ice cloudy. This double boiling method is supposed to result in clear ice. According to Cockerham, this double boiling process touted by WikiHow for one, is false. 

After over a month of experimenting with more than 15 various methods he just happened to stumble across a photo on reddit of a perfectly clear ice sculpture of Optimus Prime, the notorious transformation shape shifting icon from 'Transformers'.

Cockerham was re-inspired by the possibility of perfectly clear ice after espying this image and asked the poster how such perfection was achieved.  Promptly he was sent the link to an episode of “How It’s Made” from the Science Channel. Their method for creating perfectly clear ice used a constantly running air pump and a large plastic tub of water. After two attempts and days of waiting, the pumping method worked...half way.  Clearly Cockerham is an optimist (not Optimus) and you know what they say his glass (or tub) was half full and not half empty.

After literally sawing off the bad and cloudy, essentially cutting the entire ice block in half, Cockerham was left with a 1 inch thick slab of perfectly clear ice, even “acrylic” in appearance.

So why did he go through this trouble to make perfectly clear ice? 

Besides the obvious celebratory cocktail holder, Cockerham mentioned making “huge ice lenses, craft sweet ice sculptures…” the guy likes to play and do stuff with his hands, and quite honestly clear ice looks really cool. 

Image By The U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Clifton (Birthday ice sculpture) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

If Cockerham had just consulted a culinary student first(or find one on reddit)  he would have had perfectly clear ice in less than 12 attempts, (consider the ice sculpture source of inspiration). They teach ice sculpting (often utilizing perfectly clear ice in the design) at most culinary schools. As a curious, hands on, kind of guy, perhaps he could have also learned to cook a new dish with the ingredients in his freezer which are hard to take your eyes off- frozen waffles, chicken, mint moose tracks ice cream, bananas and one pea...ideas? As his clear ice methods fail, the contents of his freezer become more interesting in his pictorial journey, but most significant and a value to us all of course is Cockerhams' conclusion... after a dozen failures, "WikiHow sucks,  and Instructables is unreliable, but the rest of the internet holds great promise."