This evening I was enjoying a chilled beverage when i was reminded of a phonomina that Ive been curious about for years.
Smelly Ice !!!
Often i find if i take a clean ice block tray and fill it with fresh tap water and put it into the freezer the next day (or Evan a hour or two later)
when i pop the ice out they will have a particular smell about them. kind of like a stale yeasty smell. not particularly unplessent but quite specific
non the less.
The odd thing is it seems (to me) to be quite universal Ive been noticing this for years in different houses with different fridges and different
iceblock trays with different taps coming from different water supply's but the smell is exactly the same.
The other thing is the smell will rub off on you if i handle the ice my fingers will smell a bit like it. and the smell moves with the ice (so its not
the freezer itself that smells)
I have always assumed it must be some kind of microbe that lives in the fridge and gets into the water before it freezes but a few observations dont
seem to match that theory.
Firstly my current fridge can freeze the surface of the ice blocks very quickly so it would be hard for the microbes to really get into the guts of
the ice block before becoming immobilized.
secondly a freezer strikes me as a rather hostile place for a microbe to hang out Evan if they survive (which is no doubt possible) i cant see them
multiplying and taking over a ice block in such a short period of time.
The other possibility is that the smell is non biological in origin perhaps there is some dissolved mineral in the water that comes to the surface
when frozen.. ?
I know exactly what you're talking about. Never gave it much thought.
The easiest first experiment would be to freeze some distilled water and some deionized water and see if there's a difference.hissingnoise - 11-3-2010 at 14:04
The smell of cold?
I've never noticed an ice-smell but frosty nights do seem to have a particular bouquet.
12AX7 - 11-3-2010 at 14:30
Freezer odors adsorbed onto the surface.
If you keep particularly nasty things in your freezer, you might not want to eat ice made in there.
Timpsychokinetic - 11-3-2010 at 16:36
"The smell of cold"
I think I know that smell.
In fact, I like it. Reminds me of working in huge fridges and freezers.
It's along the same lines as the smell of hot. My lab supervisor was talking to me about is on Tuesday (I thought I'd done something wrong, so he was
investigating).Mr. Wizard - 11-3-2010 at 16:46
All homes have some sort of smell to them. Often we don't notice it because we live there, and become insensible to the various odors. I suspect that
refrigerators also have the same sort of smells, and as 12AX7 suggested, they condense on the cold surfaces of the ice cubes.
I went to a house today to look at some antique furniture, and the smell of the place seemed to linger on my clothes for hours. I'm not sure what it
was, sort of a cat piss, dirty laundry smell. My house has it's own smells too. I can notice them when I first come home, but then lose any sense of
odor. I can smell the trash can when I come home if it's been left full a little too long.
I had a friend who had an ozone pure air system put in his house, and the place always smelled like fresh as linen hanging in the sunshine. I could
always smell a little ozone from the system, but it wasn't annoying, and smells good to me at the threshold limit. I warned him about the toxicity,
but he had been convinced by his own research, and the salesman that it wasn't a problem. A year or so later he died from a heart ailment. Any
connection? I don't know. I do know the ozone maker kept the place smelling great. Anybody else have any air purifier anecdotes.psychokinetic - 11-3-2010 at 22:35
People think I'm mad when I talk of places and times having distinct smells.chemrox - 12-3-2010 at 17:25
"The easiest first experiment would be to freeze some distilled water and some deionized water and see if there's a difference."
This experiment would help determine if the smell were related to a vapor in the freezer. The distilled water would pull the smell more quickly than
the tap water and also rule out smells within the water supply. Not sure what the DI water is for...Watson?? Sedit - 12-3-2010 at 22:48
Cold frosty nights like what hissing noise was talking about always have a slight smell of ozone to me. Clearly ozone smell but faint.bquirky - 13-3-2010 at 07:24
hmm ill grab some DI water from work and freeze some (after making sure it dosnt
smell)watson.fawkes - 13-3-2010 at 07:36
Deionized and distilled water have different impurities left
in them. Both are less that $1 a gallon at my local Wal-Mart. I doubt there would be much difference, but if there's a reaction going on, and not just
absorption (into the liquid) or adsorption (onto the solid), there might be.
(after making sure it dosnt
smell)