Big ice cubes  I’m not sure when the current fetish for huge ice
cubes started, but I’ve been noticing it for a few years now.
And when I say I’ve “noticed” it, I mean I’ve seen people
touting huge ice cubes on the internet—in real life, the ice
cubes I come across are the same size they’ve always been.
Perhaps my circle of friends is hopelessly old fashioned.  At
any rate, the articles promoting big ice cubes always say
they’re superior because they have a low surface area per unit
mass. Since melting occurs at the surface of the cube, the low
surface area is said to reduce melting and prevent your drink
from getting as watered-down as it would if you used the same
mass of smaller cubes. The writers of these articles seldom
invoke the square-cube law explicitly, but that’s what they’re
talking about. In some cases, they go beyond just saying that
big cubes melt slower and also claim that they do so while
cooling your drink just as much. These claims should be looked
upon with a gimlet eye, because the cubes’