eishivering

Eishivering is a term used in cryophysics to describe rapid, small-scale tremor-like motions within ice when it is subjected to near-melting temperatures or sudden perturbations. The word fuses eis, the German word for ice, with shivering, to evoke involuntary cold-induced tremors.

In proposed models, eishivering arises from collective rearrangements of ice crystals and quasi-liquid layers at grain boundaries under alternating thermal and mechanical stress. These micro-motions are low in amplitude but occur at high frequencies, and they may couple to detectable signals such as acoustic emissions or fluctuations in light scattering. The effect is expected to be sensitive to impurities, grain size, pressure, and the rate of temperature change.

Evidence for eishivering is limited to a small number of laboratory experiments using thin ice films or polycrystalline ice near 0 C. Signals described as eishivering have not been consistently reproduced, and some researchers interpret them as microcracking, rearrangements of porous ice, or measurement artifacts. Consequently, the concept remains informal and not widely adopted in standard ice physics. If validated, it could affect models of energy dissipation in ice, frost heave phenomena, and certain cryopreservation or geophysical processes.

Related topics include ice crystallization, acoustic emission in solids, metastable ice phases, and cryophysics.