Vonnegut's book which featured Ice 9 was called 'Cat's Cradle'.
Terrific read.
Regards,
LH
"Vonnegut's book which featured Ice 9 was called 'Cat's Cradle'. "
LOL - you beat me to it, Lancey.
"Cat's Cradle"
Thanks for this. The inspiration for Vonnegut's book actually came from Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ in the 1960s. I worked there in the 70s.
ATT needed crystals of DHP, dihydrogen phosphate, a piezo-electric crystal. The means of growing large crystals of DHP was worked out and sent to the Allentown (Penna) facility where they produced kilograms every day. It was important that the crystals grew with their c-crystallographic axis in the right direction, so they could be cut and used in making filters for the frequencies we know as the touch-tone tones.
Well, one day, all the crystals at Bell Labs started growing with their b-axis vertical. Crystals grow, of course, according to very specific temperature and pressure conditions, lowest free energy, enthalpy, etc. Alarmed, researchers at Murray Hill went to Allentown to warn them to pay attention. The next day, every Allentown crystal grew with the wrong orientation!
This was because the visitors had brought dust of the lower free-energy crystal, which then grew perfectly as now seeded.
Kurt Vonnegut visited the Labs, heard this tale, and became intrigued. Hence, the idea for an ice-9 that would solidify all water at STP.
I believe this story from having heard it first-hand at Bell Labs from good scientists.
I might mention that ID-types never mention enthalpy or the Gibbs free energy, and I doubt they ever heard of them. Or get the ideas mixed up with entropy and 'zero-point' energy.
However, real science has never stopped an IDer from some faith-based belief--Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Shinto--, and it is unlikely that facts and rationality will ever dissuade creationists or liberals.