How Do Halbertcicles Grow?
When water freezes it expands. Because ice cubes develop ice on the exterior first and then solidify toward the center, pressure builds up in the liquid center as the ice cube freezes. When the pressure causes the right kind of fissure to occur on the top of the ice cube, this allows the liquid center to percolate to the top. As water in the center percolates to the surface it freezes and causes a build up. When the percolation happens at a rate complimentary with the freezing process, a Halbertcicle is formed.
I have never taken freezer temperatures or otherwise gotten very scientific about this phenomenon. But other people have.
If you do a web search on "ice spikes" you will find a number of sites that go into detail about how they form. Seems other people call them ice spikes. And, in fact, scientists have studied this phenomenon rather intensively.
Oddly enough, though water has been freezing for many years and scientists have been around for quite a few years themselves, the research I came across has been done fairly recently.
Most people have never seen these before. I certainly didn't learn about them in science class when I was growing up and it seems like the kind of thing a science teacher would want to bring up to children to keep them interested.
I support all the science that has been done on the subject, but I do not think that it explains everything. My personal experience with them has been especially peculiar. Maybe, in one sense, no more peculiar than winning the lottery.
Science deals with what is created. I deal with being creative. Life is filled with mystery. Some of the mysteries in life are meant to be solved. When it comes to ice spikes, science has served us well. It has solved the mystery of ice spikes. Some of the mysteries in life are meant to be celebrated and explored. When it come to Halbertcicles, there is nothing to solve and there is everything to celebrate and explore.