Sally from Burford writes:
I don’t understand why my ice cubes are cloudy. The water is crystal clear when I fill the tray, yet when they freeze they become cloudy. Why is this?
Hi Sally, thanks for writing in.
Clear tap water isn’t just water, it’s actually full of stuff. This stuff is dissolved minerals, things like calcium, magnesium, iron, manganese – some of the good stuff you’d find on your multivitamin label that nature provides in water.
The reason you can’t see all this stuff is that it’s dissolved, it becomes a part of the water. The natural property of water is that the warmer it is, the more stuff it’s able to dissolve. The colder the water is, the less it is able to dissolve.
When you freeze water and change its state from a liquid to a solid, you also lessen the ability of the water to hold all the minerals it previously held as a liquid. As a result, all of the minerals that were previously dissolved are rejected and form a solid precipitate in the water.
As the water freezed solid, it holds the precipitate inside the cube, giving it a couldy appearance.
I hope that answers your question.
