Dick Fischbeck wrote:

"Is ice typically all four-way oxygen vertexes?"

John Brawley replied:

"Whatever it is, just look at snowflakes....
Hexagonal preference, I'd say. This ought to be the best way
to answer about ice structure, instead for example of trying
to examine an ice cube...."
-------------------

I'm curious why Dick asked the question? Why not google
first then ask based on what one has learned by googling? Is
there a reason why the preferred order is so often to ask
synergeo first then take a few minutes to find the answer.
Why not do a bit of research first, then one can ask better
questions about the parts that are still puzzling or need
confirming? (Before asking these questions, perhaps I should
research some psychology site that may have an answer.)

Very, very often I disagree with this or that pronouncement
generously gifted to us by John Brawley. There were times
(he and I have been on the same lists for at least 5 years)
when I responded to each instance. Generally this elicited a
firestorm of words and an acceleration of statements I
disagreed with and would feel the need to respond to.
Lately, I've been thinking of posting a sort of blanket
opinion that, although I consider Mr. Brawley to have an
excellent brain, I find that lots of his assertions are
flat out wrong.

Anyway, much is known about the various structures of ice
and the basic environment of individual oxygen atoms in ice.
And a lot is easily accessible on the web. While it is
perfectly fair for Mr. Brawley to give a response off the
top of his head, I will take the opportunity to point out
not just that he is wildly in error, but also the
vacuousness of the "This ought to be the best way to answer
about ice structure..." part.

Some time ago I'd posted images of ice1h that I'd fashioned
via SpringDance. It's nice to see that they show the
structure at least as well as the images Dick found on the
web.

http://memeticdrift.net/tau/ice1h/ice1h.htm

Also, ice1c, a form of ice metastable (readily collapses
to..) to ice1h is similar (ignoring hydrogen atoms and
trading oxygen for carbon) to diamond. One can see the
caltrop (centered tetrahedron) shape of the center atom and
its 4 bonds (green edges) a bit more clearly.

http://memeticdrift.net/tau/ice1h/diamond.htm

-- John Braley

John Brawley wrote: