Poll of the Day > Why are there ice cubes

(+) Yeah! (+)

But not ice squares?

Why is there ice^3, but not ice^2 ?

Because water molecules are 3 dimensional.

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The squares would basically be useless, I guess... Melting almost instantly, and not cooling anything down...
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You could think of that an ice cube is made up of an infinite number of ice squares.

Your face when you realize ice has over a dozen unique states of matter with their own properties

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Basically most rappers are not squares, they are too cool for that.

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Ice squares would be inefficient for their application.

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The closest you'll see to 2d ice is either a snowflake or shaved ice. Neither are square shaped.

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SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Because water molecules are 3 dimensional.

And even if we operate under the simplification of saying that planes that are only one atom thick are 2-dimensional (which is incorrect, but not an unreasonable bit of rounding for general purposes), the crystal structure formed when water freezes is definitely 3D. Even if we take the rounding even further, that crystal structure forms hexagonal shapes, not right angles, meaning you have to get pretty large (and, by extension, quite a bit thicker than 2-dimensional) before those hexagons resolve into the straight lines and right angles needed to have a square.

OS 12TR posted...

You could think of that an ice cube is made up of an infinite number of ice squares.

I'm not sure you could, actually. The ice cube can be subdivided into a finite, definite number of sheets of ice or water molecules. Even if you subdivide further than that (at which point, calling it "ice" wouldn't really be accurate anyway because that's very much a superatomic concept), even the smallest subatomic particles still have non-zero radii, meaning you would still be looking at a finite number.

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Technically ice cubes don't exist either, as a true perfect cube down to exact dimensions is only theoretically possible. We have ice polygons, that's all we can say for sure.

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There is. Its called officer tutuola from law and order.

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Let's say that by approximation a stamp is square shaped given that it's depth is so disproportionate to it's length and width. Making ice with similar measurements wouldn't work because it won't hold it's shape. Proportionally scaling it up so that it has sufficient thickness to hold its shape would be more accurately described as an ice slab.

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