Ice Castles

Ice Castles
Collect
• Water
• Plastic containers (ice cube trays, cupcake trays,
old yogurt containers)
• Different types of balloons
• Large pipette or turkey baster
• Salt
• A very, very cold day (below-freezing)
• Food coloring, optional
Create your ice blocks.
1. Fill your containers with water. Lots of different containers will give you a variety of shapes to build with.
2. Make fun spiral shapes by filling long balloons with water and then wrapping them around something
to freeze.
3. Optional: To add a bit of color to your sculpture, mix in a few drops of food coloring with your water
before you freeze it. For an extra flare, try freezing different things into your ice blocks like pinecones,
leaves or stones.
4. Leave the containers outside to freeze overnight. If it’s not cold enough, place them in the freezer for a
few hours.
Build an Ice Castle!
5. Arrange and stack your blocks any way you want.
6. To weld two pieces together, use the pipette or baster to drip some water on each piece and then hold it
together for a few seconds. The water should freeze the pieces in place.
7. Create interesting designs by using a smaller pipette to “melt” designs into your blocks using a saltwater.
To create a supersaturated salt solution, stir salt into a cup of water and keep adding salt until it no longer
dissolves. You can also add a little bit of food coloring to this solution to color your sculpture.
How does it work?
Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, but when salt is added to the water, it lowers the freezing
temperature of ice to -6 degrees Fahrenheit! This means that the water would have to be much colder to go
from a liquid to a solid. Since the ice you made is not that cold, it will melt when saltwater touches it.
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