Create Ice Spikes

Create Ice Spikes
in your Freezer!

Want to create some really
amazing ice cubes?

Try this activity!





Have you ever opened your freezer to get a few ice cubes and noticed spikes poking up from your ice cubes? Well, we did — and we were quite amazed by this finding and wanted to learn more! We've experimented with different types of water (tap water, distilled water, soft water, hard water), different water temperatures, and different freezer temperatures. The instructions below are what worked best for us. Have fun!



What You Will Need:

• Ice Cube Tray
• Distilled Water
• Freezer (with temperature set to just below freezing)

What You Do:

• Pour distilled water into a regular ice cube tray.
• Place the ice cube tray in your freezer, with the temperature set to just below freezing. (NOTE: We found that if the freezer is set too cold, the spikes do not work as well).
• Check on your ice cubes after about 1 hour. We find that about half the cubes typically form ice spikes. Pretty cool, huh?!

Variations:

• Try placing your ice cube tray outside on a cold winter day. Experiment in different outdoor temperatures, and with different temperatures of water. Note what combination produced the most ice spikes.
• Look for ice spikes in nature — on a pond, a lake, in a bird bath.
• Try this experiment with metal ice cube trays and see if you get the same results.
• Can you produce ice spikes with different liquids? Try using clear juices or carbonated sodas. What results did you get?

Want More Winter Activities for Kids?

We have lots of fun indoor and outdoor winter activities for kids of all ages in our Play With Your Kids section. Here are the links to these activities:
Ice Ornaments
Icy Bubbles
Snow Bowling
Track and Snow
Fox and Geese Backyard Game
Frozen Faces Treat
Indoor Snowball Fight
Marshmallow Snow Sculptures
Penny Hockey Game
Backyard Bird Buffet

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To enhance your learning experience, we've provided links below to educational websites regarding the subject matter of this item... we've done the research for you! Want more? Make sure to see our Free Resources for Parents and Educators.


An Investigation of Laboratory-Grown "Ice Spikes" — This is a PDF document created by K.G. Libbrecht and K. Lui from California Institute of Technology discussing the science of how ice spikes are created.