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Comment by jcampbell1 | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been making clear ice for a decade. Even gone as far as an aquarium bubbler and nichrome wire setups. What you think are obvious bubbles are not actually bubbles.

Just put a double walled insulated cup in the freezer. The internal stress explanation accounts for 98% of the result when you think through how the crystal growth happened.

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Sounds like we need an experiment. The best one I can think of is to freeze ice in presence of a tracer gas and then check if that gas is released upon melting. I'm not sure I could pull that off. Got any better ideas?

Just compare frozen boiled water and aerated tap water. Both will be cloudy when made in a tray and both will be clear when made in an insulated cup. It does make a minor difference, but it is unimportant.

Also notice the radial pattern that the internal fractures take. This is inconsistent with bubbles and perfectly consistent with internal stress due to expansion pressure.

I think the effect of boiling is negligible because air dissolves back into the water as the water cools. I don't understand your radial pattern argument. When I look closely at the lineations in the ice I see that the streaks are composed of individual spheroid voids. Not sure how fracture could do that.

You can pour water straight from the kettle into the trays and cover it.

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-ice-cubes-image179488...

In that photo I see a few gas bubbles, but it is dominated by radial expansion fractures and cloudy high pressure ice in the center. That ice will crack when put in water. Clear ice does not crack.

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