Ice. Is It Nice?

Muse, Jan 2004 by Kangas, Nancy

In its constant quest to get to the bottom of things, Muse asked me to find out what people REALLY think about ice. So off I went, to poll a horde* of kids and adults, asking probing questions about ice-cube usage and other stuff I thought might be revealing.

After days and nights of tallying and compiling data, it turns out I have no idea what people REALLY think about ice. But I have learned some other very interesting things.

Conclusion #1: Kids and adults have practically identical levels of interest in ice cubes.

Contrary to what you might think, age does NOT seem to affect how many ice cubes a person will put in a drink. What age DOES seem to affect, however, is whether or not a person owns a rock collection.Yes, rocks: those who keep rocks are significantly MORE likely to drink drinks without ice cubes. Are they using rocks instead of ice cubes? We do not know.

Conclusion #2: Kids and adults have very different levels of interest in driving a Zamboni.

No surprise here. Fifty-nine percent of the 0- to 16-year-olds said they'd be quite excited to sit atop the massive ice-smoothing machine-as opposed to a measly 17 percent of the 17-to 100-year-olds. It is worth noting, however, that those who own no pets are peculiarly blase about the Zamboni. And of those who own just cats, a whopping 60 percent say they don't care a whit about it. Probably what is happening here is that cats have an ancient fear of the Zamboni and are communicating this telepathically to their owners. On the other hand, those who own more than one pet seem especially enthusiastic. I assume this is because the multi-pet owner's life is so full of chaos, the thought of maneuvering a large piece of machinery is relaxing.

Conclusion #3: In a pinch, people will say something bOOOOring.

When asked to quickly think of a word that rhymes with "ice," a stupefying majority came up with -GROAN -"nice." The second most popular answer was "mice," which probably indicates that many people would like to see Mice on Ice. Next was "lice," which reflects a very reasonable concern about parasites. Only one person said "poltergeist," which is understandable, because it doesn't exactly rhyme.

Conclusion #4: Nobody really knows what they'd like to see sculpted in ice.

The public is hopelessly confused on this issue. A handful of respondents said they would like to see themselves in ice-who wouldn't? But after that there was no agreement: answers included "Shiva the Destroyer," "a giant broccoli," "a Zamboni," and (ahem) "an ice cube."

Final Conclusion: At this point Muse readers (and the scientific community in general) still have no idea whether people prefer crushed ice to cubes, what equipment we would like to have with us during a future Ice Age, or if we think a Snowball Earth could be hurled at Neptune. Further research is needed.

-Nancy Kangas

*horde, in this case = 64 humans, rather randomly sampled