Medieval artists and their paintings. Painting of the Middle Ages (briefly)

For any occasion, you want to surprise your guests and make dishes and drinks not only tasty, but also beautiful. And the simplest and affordable option decorate them - serve original ice. It can be made in different shapes, colors, sizes, but the most main nuance in such a way, it would seem simple matter- take high-quality water and prepare it correctly. Then a beautiful presentation of a dish or drink will be ensured - you can easily surprise guests or just people close to you, and they will thank you with their enthusiastic words of gratitude. How to make clear ice at home the same as in any bar? Let's look at the options below.

How to get clear ice?

In fact, everything is simple - ordinary physics:

If there are no air bubbles in frozen water, it will be transparent.
If there are a lot of bubbles in the water, it will turn cloudy when frozen.

Why is this happening? When freezing, the liquid hardens unevenly, starting from the edge. Therefore, layer by layer, the water accumulates all the air in the center. And when the air has nowhere to escape, and the center begins to freeze, that same cloudy center appears. Therefore, to make ice transparent, you need to remove air from it. There are several options for this.

Ice maker - professional option

You can always purchase a special device for freezing water, which is used in most bars. Today there are many various options ice makers - from simple home models to large professional ones.

The essence of how the device works is that the water in it freezes in layers, not giving any chance for air to get inside. But this device is quite expensive
fun, and if you don’t need a lot of ice, you can make do with improvised means.

Home methods

Experienced bartenders know exactly how to make clear ice at home, without the use of special equipment. There are several simple methods for this.

Method one

For this option you will need to prepare:

clean water, passed through a filter, or purchased in a store, but without gas;
a boiling container, such as a saucepan;
forms for freezing.

Making ice using this method involves several steps:

Clean the water from excess salts and suspended matter or use already purified water.
Pour the liquid into a container and boil.
Cool it at room temperature.
Boil the water again - this will remove more air.
Cool the water and pass it through the filter.
Pour water that has cooled to room temperature into the molds and freeze.

Important! Ice obtained in this way is more transparent than freezing ordinary water.

There is also a method that does not require boiling water.

Method two

In order to make clear ice at home without boiling, you will need:

clean water (it is better to filter it several times or buy it);
large capacity for freezing;
ice molds.

What to do with all this:

About two liters clean water frozen in a large container, after which the frozen block is removed (the easiest way is to dip the bowl in warm water and turn over onto a lint-free towel).
Then you can chip off the ice from the edges with something sharp, gradually getting to the cloudy middle, which is not needed. There is also an option when the middle with air is washed out with water.
Next, the extracted chopped pieces are again laid out in molds, waited until it melts, and again sent to freeze until ready.

Method three

If the freezer functions allow it, you can use slow freezing. To do this, you need to set the temperature in the chamber to -1, wait until the chamber reaches it, and put the prepared water in the freezer. In this case, it is better to wrap the forms with cling film.

Important! This freezing lasts about a day, but all the air will have time to completely leave the water, and the ice will turn out smooth and beautiful.

Method four

This option involves creating a salty environment. First you need to prepare a saline solution from sea or regular table salt.

Steps to make clear ice:

Water is poured into the container and salt is added - the required concentration of the solution is achieved experimentally, since freezing conditions are different.
The salt should completely dissolve in the water.
Next, the container is placed in the freezer at a temperature of -1 or -2 degrees, but not lower.
Afterwards, you should wait about ten minutes and place the molds filled with water in the salty solution.
This freezing will take about 12 hours.

Important! This method is considered the most effective. Another advantage is that salt water You can keep it in the freezer all the time and freeze the ice as needed.

The listed methods will help you prepare crystal clear and beautiful ice for drinks, without bubbles. And it will definitely be no worse than in the coolest bars. If you don’t have an ice mold on hand, don’t worry, you can also make it yourself, at home.

Making an ice mold

There are a lot of ways to make ice without a mold, it all depends on your
fantasies. Here are some interesting options:

If it is assumed that the drink will be consumed without mixing it in mixes or cocktails, then there is an option to immediately freeze the water in the container for serving the drink. Please note that the dishes must be resistant to temperature changes and compression from cold. Also, its walls must be completely dry. For such freezing, an amount of clean water is required, poured onto the bottom of the dish, and placed in the freezer for a day at a temperature no higher than minus two degrees. Serving drinks in transparent containers, in addition to the necessary cooling, is also very unusual.
To get frozen water in the form of rounds, you can take plastic glasses of various sizes. Water must be poured only to the bottom, 0.5-1 cm high, and frozen. If you line the bottom with plastic in half or into 4 parts, you can get ice in the form of halves or quarters of a circle, respectively.
Plastic bottle caps or metal caps are also interesting option, capable of replacing molds for round ice. True, you may have difficulty extracting it from the lids.
If the same ice is not needed, you can use a base from assorted sweets. Choose substrates that will not wrinkle or leak. As a result, you will succeed interesting shapes sweets.
There is also the option of using children's construction sets or sand molds as a form. Be sure to rinse, degrease, and disinfect any mold well before use.
A regular plastic bag can easily be turned into a freezer pan. Just pour some water into it, tie a knot, add more water, tie another knot, and so on until the bag is gone. Of course, the shape of freezing in this way will not be even, but if you follow the preparation rules, then transparency and the absence of bubbles are guaranteed.

You can use any of the options you like or come up with your own to make transparent ice and molds for it.

To make clear and clean ice, you need very little, but do not forget about these additional recommendations:

Water absorbs odors well, so when cooking, make sure that there are no strong-smelling foods nearby.
You can also use a thermal bag for freezing. Just put the molds in the bag and put it in the freezer at a temperature of about minus 8 degrees. The water will freeze in the opposite way - from top to bottom, which means the air will come out of it in a different way. This ice may be a little cloudy on top, but not in the middle. This means that if you leave ice in a bowl at room temperature for a short time, the cloudy water will melt.
When using boiling, it is better to take stainless steel dishes. Aluminum containers are not suitable for this method.
Don't pour hot water in plastic forms, and also do not put hot water in the freezer. Otherwise, the mold may melt and the refrigerator may leak.
If you want to surprise your guests, make fruit ice: beat the fruits with a blender and add juice, sugar or syrup. Afterwards, pour the mixture into molds and freeze.
When serving ice without drinks the best option will use a special bucket - a cooler.
It is more convenient to take the ice with tongs, so it will not melt ahead of time.

When a Russian person is asked to imagine winter, the first thing he sees in his imagination is snow, a snow-white cover that shrouds everything around. We are so accustomed to the color of snow that we don’t even think about why there is snow. white.

Why is snow white

All the colors we perceive depend on the sun's rays. Black objects completely absorb sunlight, that’s why we are perceived as black. And if an object completely reflects a ray of sun, then the color will appear white to us.

What is snow, exactly? This is frozen water, hexagonal pieces of ice. And water and ice are colorless. Why is snow white then? Ice remains colorless because it transmits the entire ray of sunlight through it. And every snowflake would transmit all the light through itself and would also have no color. But snowflakes usually fall on top of each other in random motion. And already together they become opaque, but white.

To understand why snow is white, why it reflects the rays of the sun, we need to look at the composition of the snow. Snow is made from snowflakes, and snowflakes are made from huge amount crystals. These crystals are not smooth, but have edges. This is the answer to our question, why is snow white? It is from the edges that sunlight is reflected.

Water in the atmosphere is steam, it freezes, and transparent crystals form. Due to the movement of air, the crystals move freely up and down. In this chaotic movement, the crystals are connected to each other. And when too many crystals finally gather together, then they begin to fall to the ground in the form of snowflakes that are familiar to us.

It turns out that the color of snow is white, because the light of the sun that it reflects is white. Think if a ray of sunshine turned green or yellow, then the color of the snow would be the same. Surely, many have noticed that during sunrise or sunset, it seems to us that the rays of the sun turn pinkish, so at this moment the snow appears pink to us.

Does snow come in a different color?

Who can give an affirmative answer to this absurd question?! Don't dismiss this idea right away. In fact, it also happened that colored snow fell. For example, Charles Darwin once described one similar case. It happened during one of his expeditions. Looking at the hooves of the mules, Charles Darwin saw that they were covered with red spots. This happened when the mules walked through the fallen snow. It turned out that the red snow was formed from the presence of red pollen in the air at the time the snow began to fall.

Each of us has thought about why snow is white, and not black, blue, red or something else, at least once in our lives. Most often, the question “why is snow white” is asked by children to their parents, but not even all adults know the answer to this question.

To understand why snow is exactly this color, you first need to define the concept of color in general. What is color from a physics point of view?

We are surrounded by electromagnetic radiation, also called electromagnetic waves.. These waves are everywhere, but most of These waves are invisible to the human eye.

The visible part electromagnetic radiation perceived as color. From a scientific point of view, any color is a wave of electromagnetic radiation that is perceived by human vision and converted into a color sensation.

The primary source of electromagnetic radiation for us is the Sun. Sun rays, that is, waves, contain the entire spectrum of visible radiation, that is all basic seven colors- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

The colors of the visible spectrum merge to form white.

Some items completely absorb light waves- we see them black, other items miss Sun rays , that is, they are transparent. This is glass, water or ice.

Have you ever read fairy tales about living and dead water? Then you will be interested to know what it is really like to use them and much, much more!

Do you know what the density of sea water is and why it is easier to swim in it than in river water? Very interesting information is located, learn something new for yourself!

Most objects in our world absorb some of the rays and reflect some. For example, you can take an ordinary leaf from a green tree.

What leaf green tells us that from the visible spectrum of solar radiation it reflects rays of green light, and all absorbs the rest.

An orange absorbs all rays except orange, a red poppy absorbs all but red, and so on.

The following can be said about snow - it reflects all the rays of the visible spectrum, so we see it white, that is, the way light from the Sun appears to us.

Why is snow white and not transparent? ^

And a little more science. Someone will ask why the snow is still white and not transparent. Snow is essentially water, only in a different state of aggregation.

Water is a liquid, ice is solid, snow is a loose substance consisting of individual ice crystals. Water and ice are transparent.

But in fairness, it should be noted that in nature there are no absolutely transparent bodies, like there are no absolutely black and absolutely white bodies. Even glass is not completely transparent.

Be that as it may, water or ice has more or less smooth surface, which affects the passage of sunlight through them.

Passing through the thickness smooth ice, the rays are not absorbed and practically not refracted, most of them are transmitted, and a smaller part is reflected from the surface.

Snow is very different in its properties from ice, it's loose and not smooth at all.

To study the properties of snow in more detail, just look at a snowflake. Each snowflake is unique and has its own pattern.

But what all snowflakes have in common is that they are not smooth, but consist of many faces, that is, tiny surfaces located at an angle to each other.

A mass of snow consists of many such snowflakes that are attached to each other. Falling on a snowy surface, sunlight is refracted many times and reflected from the edges of snowflakes.

Ultimately, most of the sun's visible radiation is reflected from the snow. Moreover, as already mentioned, rays of the entire visible spectrum are reflected, which is why we see snow as white.

Snow can be compared to crushed glass or diamonds. If we imagine a huge scattering of diamonds, then it will also seem white and sparkling to us.

Perhaps everyone has noticed that in bright sunlight in winter, the surface of the snow sparkles and shimmers with all the colors of the rainbow.

So, it is the incident sunlight that is refracted and splits into individual spectral colors. That's why we see multi-colored sparkles on white snow.

Do you know what it is equal to and why it differs from the boiling point of fresh water?

Read what dew point is, how important it is and how it can be calculated, keep your home comfortable!

When snow melts, it forms special kind water - melt. How you can get it at home, how beneficial it is for health and how it is used, read here:
, it is very interesting!

Have you ever wondered why snow is white? After all, when snow melts, it turns into water, and the water is clear. Why is snow white?

A little about color

Different things have different colors. Visible light from the Sun or any other light source consists of many wavelengths. Our eyes perceive different wavelengths as different colors.

Different objects have different colors because the individual particles (molecules and atoms) that make up the object have different vibrational frequencies.

When light interacts with an object, the wavelengths that the object reflects or absorbs determine what color our eyes perceive. When an object reflects all wavelengths of light from the Sun that are in the visible spectrum, the object appears white.

When we see a fire truck, it is red because the paint it is painted with reflects specific lengths waves in the red region of the visible spectrum and absorbs other wavelengths.

If we look at the water, it is transparent. This means that wavelengths of light pass through it rather than being reflected back into your eyes.

If you look at an individual snowflake, it is also almost transparent. But when we see snow, that is, a large concentration of snowflakes, then all the light is reflected and does not pass through them. And we see snow in white.

The key factor here is the way light interacts with the mass of complex snowflakes and air that make up the snow. Snowflakes have complex and varied shapes. When light hits a snowflake (ice crystal), it meets a bend and hits another ice crystal, then another, and so on. The process continues until the light reflects off the snow rather than passing straight through it to the ground.

If there is dirt in the snow, then some of the waves will be absorbed, and we will see this dirt. But if the snow is fresh, then most of the light waves will eventually be reflected and we will see snow-white snow.

You may have noticed that sometimes snow can also have a bluish or blue tint. Snow is white when light is reflected by ice crystals only slightly a large number of times, without penetrating very deeply into the snow. If we look at a small pile of snow, it will be white, because almost all visible light reflected.

The situation is different for light that is not reflected, but penetrates into the snow. When this light penetrates the snow, the ice crystals scatter a large amount of light. The deeper the light penetrates, the more scattering occurs.

We see light from the upper layers (up to about 1 cm), while in the lower layers the light is scattered and absorbed. For light that penetrates deeper, the longer wavelengths that exist at the red end of the light spectrum are absorbed, leaving shorter wavelengths on the blue end of the spectrum that are reflected back for us to see.

It can be said that blue light travels most easily through ice. It is important to understand here that spectral selection is associated with absorption, and not with reflection, as is sometimes thought.

IN in this case we can talk about snow as a filter that allows or does not allow different colors to pass through. If we have a centimeter layer of snow, then all the light passes through it. If it is a meter or more, then only blue the light will pass through it (dissipates in it). An analogy can be made with a cup of coffee. When we first pour it, it is light; the more of it, the darker it becomes.

Our Ksyusha has become a bitch. And mom and dad became walking mini-encyclopedias. Therefore, to help parents of the same children, we decided to create a new section “” and publish answers to the most common children’s questions in it. We will try to adapt all the answers as much as possible for preschool children, so that it is easier for parents to explain to them the complex laws of nature.

It's winter now and therefore, of course, questions about why are in the TOP :) That's why we publish our answers to the snowiest questions.

What is snow?

Snowflakes are formed in the same way as raindrops: water evaporates from the seas and oceans and rises to the sky, where it cools and collects into droplets. When it is very cold, water droplets freeze into ice crystals. They fall to the ground in the form of snow. The melted snow evaporates or flows into streams, from where it again begins its path to the sky.

Why is snow white?

If snowflakes and droplets are of the same nature, then why are the droplets transparent and the snowflakes white? The fact is that each individual snowflake is transparent in itself, but together they fall to the ground in a chaotic manner and form a loose mass. Snowflakes lie to each other at different angles. Sunlight is reflected first in one snowflake, then in another, and so on, until it is directed back. It turns out that the snow completely reflects sunlight, and since the rays of the sun are white, the snow is white. If the rays of our Sun were yellow and red, then the snow would also be yellow or red. At sunset or sunrise, when we see the pink rays of the sun, the snow also turns pink.

Why do snow and ice melt from salt?

Snow and ice are water that freezes (becomes solid) at 0 degrees Celsius. If you add salt to water, you get a salt solution that freezes at temperatures below 0. If you sprinkle ice or snow with salt, we will make them melt, since salt dissolves in water and lowers its freezing point.

First, the ice around the salt crystal will melt, and then the melting process will spread further from this point.

Which snow melts faster?

Dirty snow melts faster because:

There are also salts in the mud, which speed up the process of snow melting.
Mud is usually dark, which means it absorbs the sun's rays and, as a result, quickly heats up, warming the snow in its wake.

Is it possible to eat snow?

Snow tends to collect dust. City dust, in addition to ordinary natural dirt and bacteria, contains many heavy metals and other toxic substances that are very dangerous for humans. By eating snow, a person absorbs all these toxic substances and puts his life at risk of poisoning.

High in the mountains, pure snow falls without dangerous impurities, but such water is also unhealthful for the body, since it lacks the most important salts that are usually found in drinking water. There is only one conclusion: eating snow is not only unhealthy, but also dangerous to health.

Are there any identical snowflakes in the world?

More than a hundred years ago, when the first cameras first appeared, one man nicknamed “Snezhika” decided to photograph snowflakes under a microscope. He took 5,000 pictures, but not a single snowflake pattern was repeated. Many years have passed, and scientists are still arguing whether there are identical snowflakes. They even created 2 twin snowflakes in their laboratory, but this still did not put an end to their dispute. Having started another study, scientists came to the conclusion that snowflakes may differ not only in their external pattern, but also in their internal structure. This means that even if snowflakes are identical in appearance, most likely their internal structure is still different.