Is ice a type of glass?

A crystalline substance doesn't necessarily have to be a single crystal to be deemed as such. An amorphous solid such as glass doesn't exhibit a crystalline structure even at very high levels of magnification. Glassy substances have a glass transition phase that is lower than the melting temperature. The melting point of ice formed under ordinary circumstances is ice Ih, with a melting point of 0° C. In other words, the ice we typically see is a crystalline form of ice. There are a number of other forms of ice; fortunately Kurt Vonnegut's ice nine (Cat's Cradle) is not one of them. Ice IX (as opposed to Vonnegut's ice nine) exhibits a tetragonal crystalline structure and only forms below liquid nitrogen temperatures. The ordinary ice Ih we typically encounter exhibits a hexagonal (think snowflakes) crystalline structure.

Amorphous ice can be made, but it's rather hard to prepare. Extremely pure water is needed, and the water needs to be supercooled very rapidly to liquid nitrogen temperatures. One can supercool liquid water, but any substantial disturbances or vibrations (e.g., looking at it cross-eyed) will result in that water instantaneously freezing into ordinary, everyday crystalline ice. If you quickly cool pure water far below its nominal freezing point and somehow avoid invoking any significant disturbances, you can indeed create a glassine form of ice.


Ice, as in the ice you see in cold weather, is most certainly a crystal. In fact ice has at least 11 different crystal forms depending on the temperature and pressure. The form we see on a cold day is ice 1h.

A glass, i.e. an amorphous solid, is a material that has no long range order and shows a glass transition rather than a distinct melting point. It is possible to make amorphous ice but it's hard, and it normally exists only in outer space.

From your question I wonder if you're mixing up a glass phase with a metastable phase. The 1h form of ice is the most stable under usual terrestial cold conditions, but there are other forms that are metastable under these conditions and will slowly turn into ice 1h. However being metastable does not make a phase glassy.