Ice

Ice is a semi-transparent solid block formed on Snowy Biomes (formerly snow worlds) from exposed water, and is slightly slippery. Any block of water exposed to snow will eventually freeze into ice. All sides of an ice block use the same texture.

Ice can be easily destroyed without tools, but using a pickaxe greatly helps. If there is another block directly underneath the block, it will revert back to water when broken, otherwise it will shatter, using the same sound clip as glass.

Ice will melt into water under level 12 lighting conditions, but only if the light source is a block. Sunlight will not melt ice. Torches cannot be placed on ice directly. When the light level is 11, the ice does not melt, but it won't form either.

If ice is broken or melted Water will come out of it even in the Nether.

Items and miniblocks move extremely fast when the water they are in flows over ice. This is particularly useful for transporting resources using water currents, because items will slide on ice blocks when they are dropped at an angle, even if water is not placed on top.

Potential uses

 * if creating a water slide, ice blocks can be used as the bottom pieces of the slide, to speed up the item movement.

Trivia

 * If a player rides a pig on ice using a saddle, the pig moves incredibly fast, making journeys across long frozen lakes easier.
 * Although it is seemingly transparent, water cannot be seen through ice, nor can other ice blocks.
 * If an ice block is hacked into one's inventory and broken in the Nether, the water will not evaporate. This is useful for creating obsidian farms.
 * Sugar cane can be placed on the side of ice.
 * When a map generates it is possible to get a cave one block below water level with a ceiling of ice.
 * If an ice block is placed in mid-air and is melted by a source of light, such as glowstone, then it will melt into water while staying in the air. The water will remain suspended in the air until a block adjacent to it is modified.
 * If you try to light ice on fire with a flint and steel, no flames will appear, but the flint and steel will still act as if it had used (it will count as a use). The same thing happens with glass.
 * Ice isn't as transparent as glass and so it gives less light.
 * Ice doesn't look transparent in the inventory or when your character holds it but will look transparent when placed.
 * Water does not freeze into ice from the presence of nearby snow blocks
 * Along with Portals, Ice is one of the few blocks that uses translucent pixels (colored but still semi-transparent) in the default Minecraft texture pack.
 * Light passes through ice blocks diffusely, reducing the light level by 2 per ice block.
 * Water will not come out of destroyed ice if there isn't a block under it.

Bugs

 * If the user is playing on a non-snow Alpha map generated before the halloween update, as of 1.6, oceans may freeze over because of ice regeneration in snow biomes

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