#3144: Phase Changes
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Transcript
[Blondie is standing to the right of a table, with her right hand gesturing toward a bowl of ice sitting on a table. There is a header above the comic. There is a line underneath the header.]
Header: Phase change in theory
Blondie: As you can see, when water is cooled to below 0°C, it changes from a liquid to a solid.
[Blondie is standing in the same position, but the bowl now contains ice which has uneven structures growing out of it. To the left of the bowl, the ice is growing a trapezoid longer at the top than the bottom, and on the right side, the bowl is growing a large diagonal spike, which has a wider lower half then the upper half, the tip of which hangs over the edge of the bowl. There is a line underneath the header.]
Header: Phase change in practice
Blondie: When water freezes, it sometimes sends out long weird spikes.
Blondie: Physics tells us the water is "trying to give us a present."
(Sourced from explainxkcd.com)
Title text:People looking for the gaps in our understanding where the meaning of consciousness or free will might hide often turn to quantum uncertainty or infinite cosmologies, as if we don't have breathtakingly complex emergent phenomena right there in our freezers.