New crystalline ice form – Science Codex

Ice is a very versatile material. In snowflakes or ice cubes, the oxygen atoms are arranged hexagonally. This ice form is called ice one (ice I). “Strictly speaking, however, these are not actually perfect crystals, but disordered systems in which the water molecules are randomly oriented in different spatial directions,” explains Thomas Loerting from the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Including ice I, 18 crystalline forms of ice were known so far, which…

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