Cool ice formations my friend discovered on his deck this morning | Hacker News Reader

Cool ice formations my friend discovered on his deck this morning

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237 pointsdavidbarker60 comments

Something similar has been discussed in the past "Extruding Ice from Steel Fences and Pipes with Diurnal Freeze/Thaw" http://my.ilstu.edu/~jrcarter/ice/diurnal/extrude/ , but most of the links are dead :( :( :(

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2089306 (148 points | Jan 10, 2011 | 13 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26121775 (261 points | 11 months ago | 21 comments)

Anyway, from one of the comments I got this video "Extruding Ice From A Steel Pipe- Time Lapse" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbiEfr5FxEA

Internet archive to the rescue! This is not a particular capture by the way, only one that still had content on the page:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190216145020/http://my.ilstu.e...

this is one of the most common causes of damage and failure for low-cost small radio towers (such as a 60' to 80' that a ham radio enthusiast might erect in their yard). Usually because the hollow tubular legs of a triangular lattice tower aren't set into gravel at the bottom of the foundation concrete block, and there's no way for water to drain out. Then you have not only rust issues to be concerned about for corrosion, but also freeze/thaw cycles.

Any tower type with hollow legs can see this problem if not installed right.

Seen with small Rohn 45G class towers that are put up by amateurs.

https://www.rohnnet.com/rohn-45g-tower

A link to some more pictures: https://www.kosmosjournal.org/news/frost-flowers-natures-exq...

A natural, sub-zero, 3D printer. Neat.

Wonder if one could print a massive space telescope lens this way

Almost certainly not.

Search for "ice ribbons" on Google images.

Was coming in to say the same thing.

Super cool though.

I think it's called ribbon ice.

I've always thought it would be cool to have containers that are designed to extrude it so that before a storm comes you could fill them with water and have a transient art thing happen.

I think that the temperature requirements are rather specific, so you might also need some kind of temperature control widget to make it happen more reliably.

I know them as frost flowers but it seems to be the same thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_flower

In caves, things like this would be called helictites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helictite

> They can be easily crushed or broken by the slightest touch. Because of this, helictites are rarely seen within arm's reach in tourist caves.

Wonderful bit of Gitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy-esque comedy.

It looks like the suggestion of extruding ice (in another comment) seems more plausible than a kind of capillary action as you suggest.

For it to be extruding ice, the top of the railing would need to be full of water (which seems unlikely), and there need to be multiple holes in the railing of the same cross-section (which also seems unlikely).

Because it is snowing an ice cap can form on top of the rail, and if the railing is warmer than freezing (for example if the air is above freezing), then heat can be transferred to the bottom of the ice cap, and water can come out the sides of the ice cap? Edit: leaving a layer of water under the icecap? Although cap would slide off if it were completely liquid under cap?

Aside: I saw something similar recently while I was playing with a Himalayan salt block candle holder, placed on a plate, placed on a wood burner. Wetting the outside of the holder with a sprayer causes the salt to dissolve and the brine pools in the plate. As the brine pool dries due to the heat, salt forms an impermeable crust on the pool, and then the brine dries from the edge of the pool. The dried salt slowly extends over the plate, and it then goes over the edge of the plate and the salt dries on the underside of the plate. The heat of the wood burner speeds up the process. I originally saw the process happen to the salt block over months of time while it was sitting on a dish, sitting in an environment that is sometimes humid and sometimes dry. Edit: image https://im.ge/i/XfAm8P

Sorry if this is too OT but does anyone know the name of the phenomenon when a bottle of water in a freezer gets just cold enough that if you shake it a little it instantly turns into slush?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercooling

That looks like it; thank you!

It's like the ice version of tin whiskers.

I think ice extrusion is better understood, but I could be wrong about that. Tin whiskers approach alchemical levels of weirdness, and are not well understood at all. The ones that look like little plants are so strange: https://aimsolder.com/technical-articles/tin-whiskers-revela...

It looks like it might be related to "frost flowers" https://www.weather.gov/lmk/frost_flowers

This made me remember a strange phenomenon I noticed a winter day a few years ago. In a park with some trees there was consistently less snow coverage in a line going away from each tree, always in the same westward direction. Basically following a shadow of the tree. Looking around at other objects I also noticed the phenomenon next to some signs and metal poles.

What could explain this? I could understand if there were more snow or ice in the shadow, as the ground would be colder there, but why would there be less?

Possibly less vegetation in shadow of these objects, and therefore less insulation between snow and warmer earth.

Wind. The trees and other structures shielded the downwind area from snow that doesn’t fall straight down.

It's probably windy and the snow piles up on the windy side of the tree.

Probably prevailing wind conditions.

Probably was snowing gently at some point and then later on it got windy and was blowing west.

The trees reflecting afternoon sun?

Strange attractors saying "Hello!"

But aren't we all?

Ice jellyfish have been in the news lately, but I prefer this ribbon ice. https://www.pentictonwesternnews.com/community/ice-jellyfish...

Is there any way to reproduce a similar effect as a fun home science experiment?

I might’ve guessed something could be fabricated or 3-D printed and thrown in the freezer on a small scale, but I didn’t notice anything in a cursory Google search…

somewhere in the Twitter comments, there's a link to another hacker news post that shows it's likely trapped water extruding from small holes in the fence structure. drill some holes in a pipe and put it somewhere freezing

I wonder if the underlying mechanism responsible for forming these ice formations are the same as that of plants and vines. It seems to me the boundary between what we call alive vs not is getting ever blurrier.

Twitter dislikes VPN users so it is unviewable for me, just endless refreshing

https://nitter.net/CJF_NC/status/1490093486330322949

Wow, that loads immediately and actually shows the content in a useful way.

Thank you!

Off topic rant, BUT I'm gonna...

What is this? Why is it so much faster, and mobile friendly layout than either Twitter.com or their mobile app? And why does Twitter.com spam me with an overlay telling me to use the mobile app before I can see a tweet? Why do they care so much about me using the mobile app that I get spammed everytime I click a twitter.com link, only on mobile?

Much easier to mine data about people through an app, and also other kinds of stuff that it enables.

Thanks, I haven't bothered clicking on any twitter links since they started insisting on everyone allowing javascript. nitter.net seems to solve that problem for me :}

I am glad I could help! If nitter.net itself is not working, you can pick a mirror from this list:

https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances

I read twitter without an account. Twitter tries all kinds of things to get me to log in. Now it blocks too much scrolling on a particular person's tweets.

It's this kind of user-unfriendly design that makes me want to abandon all social media.

Thank you, I wonder if I can somehow automatically twitter -> nitter in my hosts file or something.

It doesn’t help in-browser, but if you’re on macOS and using Finicky, you can add this to your `~/.finicky.js` under the `rewrite` rules:

    {
      match: ({ url }) => url.host === 'twitter.com',
      url: ({ url }) => {
        return { ...url, host: 'nitter.net' }
      },
    },

It goes along quite nicely with my `medium.com` to `scribe.rip` rule:

    {
      match: ({ url }) => url.host.endsWith('medium.com'),
      url: ({ url }) => {
        return { ...url, host: 'scribe.rip' }
      },
    },

(It should be possible to make it pick a random list from nitter mirrors.)

EDIT: Improved version that picks from random nitter redirectors (https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances#third-party-...). It needs the following declared at the top of the `finicky.js` file:

    const NITTER_HOSTS = ['twiiit.com', 'twitit.gq']

    const nitterHost = () => NITTER_HOSTS[Math.floor(Math.random() * NITTER_HOSTS.length)]

Then the rewrite rule is:

    {
      match: ({ url }) => url.host === 'twitter.com',
      url: ({ url }) => {
        return { ...url, host: nitterHost() }
      },
    },

Privacy Redirect firefox browser plugin can do that: https://github.com/SimonBrazell/privacy-redirect

I use the Redirector[0] browser extension to do this, and it works great.

[0]: https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/

Good lookin' out, thanks

Edit: Here's the config I use to twitter -> nitter

    Redirect: https://twitter.com/\*
    to: https://nitter.net/$1
    Hint: Any word after twitter.com leads to nitter
    Example:https://twitter.com/some-username → https://nitter.net/some-username
    Applies to: Main window (address bar), IFrames

That got me wondering what other frontends there are for popular sites, and though I don't use reddit, I know a lot of folks do, so this should work for a thing I just found called 'teddit' which is inspired by Nitter

    Redirect: https://reddit.com/*
    to: https://teddit.net/$1
    Hint: Any word after reddit.com leads to teddit
    Example: https://reddit.com/u/some-username → https://teddit.net/u/some-username
    Applies to: Main window (address bar), IFrames

Here's a great compilation of privacy-preserving, JS-free front-ends for many popular sites like Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, and more: https://github.com/mendel5/alternative-front-ends

Thanks!

Do you find the same with Google?

Google seems to periodically block me outright, sometimes I can get around it by switching servers but it becomes infuriatingly obvious the high percentage of sites that integrate and depend on Google (fonts, CDNs, map apis when there isn't even a frickin map in the page)... when everything just hangs on foo-api.google.com you start hating Google.

I don't know, I haven't tried, I do not communicate with Google properties.

Every time I see this phenomenon, it still blows my mind. It’s absolutely gorgeous, I’ll never get tired of seeing it!

Looks similar to the fluffy ice that forms on wood and was recently discovered to be caused by a fungus.

Probably should drive some drain holes at the bottom of that railing?

This is called hoarfrost

I don't think that's correct - hoarfrost is sort of a feathery looking frost that forms from water vapor in the air on cold, clear nights.

This looks more like ice created from water freezing inside something and being extruded through cracks or holes.

Hoarfrost is ice crystals that grow in place, which is different. This looks to be formed by extrusion.

The spiraling icicles in the photo are not hoarfrost.

Wind conditions there must me interesting.

That's... phonetically unfortunate.

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