Ice Spikes

You love dessert, specifically ice cream
You want to control your caloric or macro-nutrient intake
You like saving money in the long-run
You want to revolutionize your life

do yourself a favor and consider purchasing a Ninja Creami. This device can turn nearly any ingredient into ice cream, frozen yogurt, slushies, Italian ice, sorbets, gelatos, or milkshakes. You can find ingredients to make any typical flavor and add mix-ins to create concoctions limited only by your imagination. These potions can be as high- or low-calorie as you want; they can contain as much protein as you can handle.

The sweet tooth in my mouth is the size of K2. Using low-calorie milk replacements and sugar substitutes, I can have a pint-and-a-half of ice cream for fewer than 200 calories. In the long run, I can save money by ditching increasingly expensive frozen options in grocery stores.

This article is in no way sponsored by Ninja. I’m just trying to make your life better.

Not only did it bump my quality of life, but it also introduced me to a glorious outdoor topic.

To use the Creami, you blend ingredients, throw them in a container, and freeze them. When you’re ready to eat, you toss the container in the device, and the blades abracadabra the hard mix into soft deliciousness.

When popping in a container, you have to watch out for a phenomenon that might damage the blades or machine. The top of the frozen material needs to be flat or the spinning cutlasses might throw the system off balance. This notion might sound like a minor inconvenience – how non-flat can a liquid become as it freezes? – but sometimes the soon-to-be-ice-cream comes from the freezer looking like this:

@bykelseysmith How to fix those lumps, bumps, and humps on your frozen Ninja Creami ice cream creations. #ninjacreami ♬ Circles - Instrumental - Post Malone

What causes such humps or monstrosities to form during the freezing process?

These shapes arise thanks to the properties of water and are known as ice spikes!

Inherent in water is the amazing ability to expand when it freezes. Most elements and compounds become denser as they cool. Water is the only common liquid that features anomalous expansion (a few other elements also expand when cooled, though they are rarely encountered in the real world, namely silicon, gallium, germanium, and bismuth). The life-giving liquid becomes about 9% less dense when it freezes, which is why ice cubes float in drinks.

We call the opening sequence of phase changes nucleation. If something drops below its freezing point, a molecule might solidify around the surface of a container or a solid that happens to be in the area. This nucleation process forms rain and clouds: water vapor nucleates around dust particles. When water is in a solid container and we throw it in the freezer, nucleation usually occurs on a microscopic part of the container that isn’t smooth. If you could observe cubes freezing inside your unit, you would notice they become solid from the outside in, thanks to nucleation.

Most of the time, this attribute means little. The water becomes ice in a nice, regular fashion. Depending on a variety of conditions, however, things can get wonky. In some circumstances, the water can freeze inward from all directions, meeting somewhere internally, and forming a hole. Instead of this hole closing, the expanding water moves upward. Because the edges continue to phase-change and expansion forces the cooling liquid to continue upward, ice spikes can form!

If a spike appears, it is usually angled and pointy like the examples above.

Sometimes, conditions become just right for other forms to appear, such as candles or even inverted pyramids.

The exact conditions and processes that cause all of the behaviors of ice spikes and their shapes are not yet nailed down scientifically. Though some labs, namely Caltech, have begun to chip away at the mystery, the rare phenomenon has not gathered much attention, appearing to many as a mere curiosity.

I’ve yet to see an inverted pyramid in my frozen creations, but some of the humps have been rather anomalous.

I’ve also never seen an ice spike in the wild, but, thanks to homemade ice cream, now I know to keep my eyes open.