A water drop that is gently deposited on a very cold surface freezes into a pointy ice-drop with a very sharp tip. The formation of this singular shape originates from the reduction of mass density during the freezing process and can be explained using a simplified model for which the universal structure of the singularity is revealed in full detail. The combination of a relatively simple, static experiment, and the accessible asymptotic analysis makes this system an ideal introduction to the topic of singularities.
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Snoeijer et al. (2012) studied this question.
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