Ice is the solid form of dihydrogen monoxide. It is in this state at or below 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), at standard (1 Atmosphere) pressure.

When water is cooled to 0 degrees, further cooling begins the process of fusion. The latent heat of fusion is the amount of heat necessary to remove to complete the process.

The solid is formed by the crystallization of water molecules. The natural crystalline shape is hexagonal, however, extremes in pressure and temperature may cause other shapes.

Ice has a density of 917 kg/m3. This is notable especially because water, at 4 degress Celsius, has a density of 1000 kg/m3. Ice, being less dense than water, floats in the liquid - this is very exceptional, as most (if not all) other substances are denser when solid.

It is suspected that the lower density of ice has had substantial impact on evolution. After all, there are large amounts of life in the various bodies of water around the planet. Because of the physical properties, lakes and oceans would freeze from the top down, which in some ways would insulate water at lower depths from the temperature, making it less likely to complete freeze.

A slang term used in the mafia to call for a hit, generally ordered after the kiss of death.

Ex: Hey Louie. Get the boys to ice Mr. X.

Or: Put Mr. Mojo Rising on ice.

1. Diamonds 2. Gems of any kind; any jewelry set with gems. 3. Anything valueless. "That phony peddler (one who sells stolen prison stores) is handing out ice. He wants a pack of butts for that lousy state mud (coffee)."

- american underworld dictionary - 1950
The X-files

Episode: 1X07
First aired: 11/5/93
Written by: Glen Morgan and James Wong
Directed by: David Nutter

A team sent to drill into the Arctic ice core stops sending transmissions. In the last transmission a member says "We are not who we are. It goes no further than this." He is soon attacked by another member. They point guns at each other and stand at a a standstill then fire upon themselves.

Mulder and Scully with three scientists, Silva, Murphy, and Hodge and a pilot, Bear.
They all fly to the arctic base and find the dead team. A dog remains alive that attacks Mulder and bites Bear. After tranquilizing the dog they see a weird movement underneath its skin and small dark dots. Bear later finds similar dots on his skin.

Scully analyzes the blood of the dead team and finds a small single-celled creature that she believes is a larval stage of a larger creature. She wants to examine Bear's blood to check for the creature. Bear resists violently. Mulder tackles him and they see the same movement at the base of Bear's neck.
Mulder radios for help but a storm is coming so help won't arrive till later.

Scully theorizes that the creature attacks a certain point in the brain and causes aggressive and violent behavior.
They each become suspicious of each other and wonder who has been infected. They inspect themselves and no one has the black dots but Scully reminds them that the ones on the dog and on Bear disappeared after a while.

Mulder wakes up one night to find Murphy in a freezer with his throat slit. The others find him and accuse him of killing him.
They lock Mulder in a room.

Scully finds out that two creatures in the same host will attack and kill each other. They test the dog by putting another creature into it's ear. The dog is fine.
Scully is convinced that Mulder is not infected but the other two want to use the same treatment on him. Scully is scared that if he isn't infected he will be if they give him a creature.
They take Mulder and the two others push Scully into the room and lock her. The force Mulder on the ground and prepare to put the creature in his ear. One sees the other scientist's neck moving and he and Mulder administer the creature.

Important quotes:
Mulder (about undressing in front of the guys so they can check each other) -- "Before anyone passes judgement, may I remind you we are in the Arctic."

Scully -- " Mulder... you may not be who you are."

Previous Episode|Next Episode

Back to The X-files: Season 1

Gee Whiz Facts About Ice

Most kinds of matter contract as they freeze, but when water freezes its molecules move apart taking up more space and become locked together making it less dense than water. That's why ice floats in a glass of water. Salt water is even denser than fresh water, so giant icebergs, which are composed of fresh water float in the ocean.

Some chemicals like salt lower the freezing temperature of water and can make ice melt. This chemical reaction keeps the temperature of water at about 28ºF, lower that the freezing point for water. This is what happens when making ophie's easy homemade ice cream When salt and ice are added around the out side of the ice cream "freezer” or in this example ophie's coffee can, the resulting water provides a uniform chilling effect around the ice cream, but will not freeze it. Without salt, the ice would melt, and the water temperature would rise preventing the ice cream from freezing.

The effects of pressure on ice explains how big masses of glaciers can slide downhill. Storglaciaren in Sweden has been clocked moving at 3 inches a day and Rinks Ibrae, a glacier in Greenland, has been recorded moving about 90 feet a day!

More Gee Whiz Facts

  • The tallest iceberg on record was one in the North Atlantic estimated to be nearly as tall as the
    Washington Monument-- and that was just the part sticking out of the water! (Two-thirds of the average iceberg's
    total mass is under water)

  • Glacier's ice crystals may grow as large as softballs.

  • About one-tenth of the earth is covered by ice.

  • Some Arctic insects contain a kind of antifreeze. The Arctic Beetle can survive temperatures as low as - 76ºF.

  • The Roman emperor Nero is believed to have had runners bring ice and snow from mountain areas so he could enjoy ice wines and fruit.
    Sandra Markle,Oddball Ice,Creative Classroom(Jan/Feb 2001), 67.
  • Ice is recrystalised methamphetamine hydrochloride. Methamphetamine is a potent and very addictive stimulant first synthesized in Japan in 1919, and is being abused at an increasing prevalence (in a 1996 survey, nearly five million Americans had used this drug at some time in their lives—up from approximately 3.8 million in 1994.)(1).

    Ice is an indirectly acting sympathomimetic that causes a massive release of dopamine in the brain. The marked increase in dopamine levels may be related to the subjective 'high', similar to that observed with cocaine administration, and some of the neurologic complications are likely due to dopamine-mediated vasoconstrictive effects (2). Thus this drug induces in users experiences of euphoria, increased alertness and confidence, and reduced fatigue and appetite by blocking the reuptake, and stimulating the dopamine and norepinephrine releasing in the central nervous system. While methamphetamine may be smoked, taken orally, or injected intravenously, Ice -the "drug of power-" can only be smoked.

    In contrast to base cocaine, acute effects of smoked meth may last between 4 and 24 hours as it has a plasma half-life of 12 hours. Smoked in a base form, it is usually known as SNOT, this term being related with its similarity to the natural product of the same name (3).

    Among withdrawal symptoms it has been reported severe craving, depression, fatigue, inertia, paranoia, and maniac-depressive psychosis. Medical complications associated with Ice abuse include severe neurologic and psychiatric conditions, such as haemorrhagic and ischemic infarcts, subarachnoid haemorrhages, memory loss, and psychosis(4).

    Clinical and preclinical observations suggest that methamphetamine may cause long-lasting injury to the brain. In humans, some of the psychiatric disorders, such as paranoid psychosis, may occur not only acutely during methamphetamine exposure but may persist for months or even years after cessation of abuse. Its neurotoxic effects has been observed in rhesus monkeys for as long as 4 years after the last drug exposure. Furthermore, several studies in rodents have shown that methamphetamine is toxic to dopaminergic and serotonergic neurons. However, in humans, only two recent PET studies demonstrated decreased dopamine transporters, which suggests long-lasting neurotoxicity due to methamphetamine abuse (5).

    Smokable methamphetamine is like the crack. They may both briefly be delightful but offer only a toxic and delusive short-cut to the biological nirvana awaiting our descendants (3).

    1. Office of Applied Studies. Preliminary results from the 1996 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. : Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1996.
    2. Wang AM, Soujanen JN, Colucci VM, Rumbaugh CL, Hollenberg NK. Cocaine- and methamphetamine-induced acute cerebral vasospasm: an angiographic study in rabbits. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol 1990; 11:1141–1146.
    3. Ice.
    4. Smith DE, Fischer CM. Acute amphetamine toxicity. J Psychedel Drugs 1969; 2:49–54.
    5. Volkow N, Chang L, Wang G, et al. Evidence in humans that methamphetamine abuse produces long lasting changes in dopamine transporters. Presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine Meeting. Los Angeles, CA. 1999.

    ICE is also an acronym for in-circuit-emulator.

    An in-circuit emulator, typically for an IC, usually consists of a box with lots of microprocessors in it, a data cable on one side for connecting to a computer, and a cable on the other side that ends in a plastic block with pins on it the same shape as the IC being emulated. An application runs on the computer, so the ICE can be reprogrammed, usually breakpoints can be added, and usually a dump of all the registers can be performed at any time too. Other, more sophisticated features are available on more expensive ICEs, but of course you have to pay for extra functionality. The use of an ICE in the development of electronic circuits greatly facilitates debugging because the code can be traced much more easily.

    ICBM address = I = ID10T error

    ice n.

    [coined by Usenetter Tom Maddox, popularized by William Gibson's cyberpunk SF novels: a contrived acronym for `Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics'] Security software (in Gibson's novels, software that responds to intrusion by attempting to immobilize or even literally kill the intruder). Hence, `icebreaker': a program designed for cracking security on a system.

    Neither term is in serious use yet as of early 2001, but many hackers find the metaphor attractive, and each may develop a denotation in the future. In the meantime, the speculative usage could be confused with `ICE', an acronym for "in-circuit emulator".



    Ice is a novel by Anna Kavan.

    It begins with the protagonist going to visit a woman who once was important in his life, though it is not clear to what extent, and the man she now lives with. He remarks upon her fragility and is alarmed by the man's callousness. Suddenly, this very mundane scenario is altered: glaciers begin appearing, only to disappear again. The setting suddenly changes as well: it is now a country at war, and the protagonist is attempting to escape and find the woman. He finds a boat, and takes it to a northern country, where he pretends to be an archeologist--in reality, he is still trying to find her. She is being held, he finds, by the local warlord, who will not give her up, being aware of this connection between them. He almost has her within his grasp, but the warlord (obviously the man who appeared in the first part of the book) takes her away.

    In this way, the protagonist hunts the woman through a variety of settings, much like a literary game of Super Mario Brothers. With glaciers intruding at occasional moments. Each time, she is taken away. Gradually it becomes obvious that the woman does not want to be caught--that he is forcing himself upon her, imagining in her a fragility and a need for protection that she does not possess--it is not the other man who is the enemy, it is herself.

    This novel is a detournement of the classic myth of a Grail quest, where the strong hero and his phallic lance undertake a conquest of the yonic Grail. Kavan's book gives the Grail a voice--turning it from passive reward to antagonist. As such, it is a wonderfully feminist and thought-provoking piece of work, written in a lucid, metaphor-drenched style.

    I highly recommend this novel--and its cousin, Italo Calvino's short story "Glaciation."

    Acronym for 'In Case of Emergency'. Right thinking citizens should ensure their mobile phones have the phone number of their next-of-kin programmed into the memory, under the name of ICE. This next-of-kin could be contacted in the event of an emergency to identify the victim, and perhaps provide vital medical information or psychological support.

    The idea behind ICE came from Bob Brotchie, an East Anglian Ambulance NHS Trust paramedic, who often was forced to scavange through the wallets and mobile phone memories of victims he attended to in order to identify a next of kin.

    Bob's idea was subsequently promoted by Vodafone in April 2005, with the assistance of Falklands War veteran Simon Weston . The London bombings of 7 July, 2005 helped boost public recognition of ICE phone listings, as have mass circulated e-mails. However there have also been hoax e-mails that claim an ICE phone listing could cancel out a phone's PAYG credit, or price phone calls at premium rates.

    Naturally there are limits to how effective an ICE phone listing is. Hopefully if you ever suffer a mishap your phone will be with you, fully operable and charged, not PIN-locked and won't have your estranged ex still listed as your ICE contact.

    One thinks that ICE will not be used to SMS your parents news of your death.

    Ice (?), n. [OE. is, iis, AS. is; aksin to D. ijs, G. eis, OHG. is, Icel. iss, Sw. is, Dan. iis, and perh. to E. iron.]



    Water freezes at 32° F. or 0° Cent., and ice melts at the same temperature. Ice owes its cooling properties to the large amount of heat required to melt it.


    Concreted sugar.








    © Webster 1913.







    To chill or cool, as with ice; to freeze.


    © Webster 1913.

    Log in or registerto write something here or to contact authors.