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FLUID DYNAMICS

Shapes of ice and rock

Nature Reviews Physics volume 4, page 83 (2022)Cite this article

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Melting and freezing causes ice to form all kinds of shapes, from simple pointy icicles to complex sculpted pillars (pictured). From a modelling point of view, the shapes can be understood in terms of how the interface between a liquid and solid phase moves during a phase transition — a problem that has been studied in simplified situations since the 1800s. But in reality, the changes in temperature in the fluid lead to changes in density, which in turn set up convective fluid flows that can affect how the interface moves. These effects are particularly complicated for water, because its density is maximum at 4 °C, rather than at its freezing point. In a paper to appear in Physical Review Letters, Scott Weady and colleagues report experiments and simulations of ice suspended in cold water, showing that the ice forms pinnacles if the water is sufficiently cold or warm, but that it forms complex scalloped shapes for intermediate temperatures.

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References

Original article

  • Weady, S. et al. Anomalous convective flows carve pinnacles and scallops in melting ice. Phys. Rev. Lett. (in the press)

Related articles

  • Weady, S. et al. Anomalous convective flows carve pinnacles and scallops in melting ice. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.09937 (2021)

  • Huang, J. M. & Moore, N. J. Morphological attractors in natural convective dissolution. Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 024501 (2022)

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  1. Nature Reviews Physics https://www.nature.com/natrevphys/

    Zoe Budrikis

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  1. Zoe Budrikis
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Correspondence to Zoe Budrikis.

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Budrikis, Z. Shapes of ice and rock. Nat Rev Phys 4, 83 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-022-00427-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-022-00427-5

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