You might think that creating ice may be a simple business: just throw water into the freezer and it turns to ice. Simple, right? That’s true if you only want to form one tray of ice, but most folks like better to have ice available on demand. That’s why we’ve ice makers, devices which will make ice consistently for the various years that you simply will own your fridge. The essential ingredient of ice is, as you would possibly expect, water. But you cannot just throw unspecified water into an ice maker: good ice needs clean, water.

Most ice makers are built around a tray that has semicircular depressions in it. A valve above this controls the flow of water, filling the tray with enough water to fill the depressions, forming the form of the cube. Because this tray is inside the freezer, it gets cold, and therefore the water begins to freeze. Nearby may be a sensor which is measuring the temperature of the water, expecting it to succeed in a particular temperature usually about -12°C/10°F.

Most of you’ll even be conversant in the curse of a budget ice maker: you get an enormous block of ice because the ice cubes have stuck together. Inside your kitchen appliance, the ice cubes that are in touch will join together as they accrete new ice, forming a solid block. If you’ve got a very bad refrigerator, the ice cubes can also be melting slightly because the temperature of the freezer compartment rises. This creates a skinny layer of liquid water on the surface of the ice cubes, which flows together, only to be refrozen when the freezer cools down again.
More expensive fridges affect this problem by including a stirrer, a metal rod that’s turned occasionally inside the ice bucket, separating the ice cubes. This also explains the mysterious noises that you simply may hear from your expensive fridge within the middle of the night: it is not haunted, it’s just stirring the ice. These costlier fridges also separate the freezer and kitchen appliance compartments, limiting the flow of cold air into the ice bucket so there’s less moisture within the air to be captured.