Ice cubes are notoriously hard to make as anyone in a 2nd grade science fair will tell you. If you follow these easy steps, you'll be drinking easy with your cooled beverages tonight!
First you need to decide what temperature you will have to cool your water down to in order to make your ice cubes. For this you're going to need a phase diagram for water.
In order to use the phase diagram, we're going to have to decide what pressure we're at. For example say you wanted to make ice cubes on Mars. Mars has a pressure maxing out at .01 atm for pressure. Since this is below the triple point (pressure and temperature where all three phases are present), we would need to find water vapor and force it to undergo deposition.
With this in mind we should pick a vessle to make the ice cubes in. I recommend a colander.
Now, in order to find out how long it will take from when we put the water vapor into the colander until it is fully frozen, we're going to need a comination of an energy balance and a rate equation.
If these equations seem too intimidating to you, don't fear, you're probably not qualified enough to make ice cubes. If you pick a value for Temperature far enough of the phase lines on the phase diagrams, your water vapor will eventually become ice. If you'd like more control over the process, you can pick a point exactly on a line and wait for time to approach infinity to make your ice.
Hopefully using these instructions made it signifigantly easier and clearer on how to make ice. I hope you join me next week when I explain how to make toast.
