Talk:1561: Water Phase Diagram

What's up with that square under "water vapor"? Is it just a glitch, or is it some hidden message like in https://xkcd.com/1005/? Nick818 (talk)

I think it is a hidden message, it almost looks like a tiny graph.

It looks like a tiny version of the same graph, but flipped upright so that pressure increases as you go up. (Doing this in the main strip would ruin the "Under Pressure" joke. --Druid816 (talk) 05:19, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I'd say it's the phase diagram Randall used as a template, see Wikipedia --108.162.229.232 05:28, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

The only thing I can think of is "water + vapor + paper" with the letters being {unique, identical, second, first, identical}. No idea if that means anything. It's probably just a pencil drawing that Randall forgot to remove before publishing. 108.162.216.70 06:45, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Seems to be the phase diagram from wikipedia. I put a contrast enhanced zoom here and it corresponds extremely well with the wikipedia version (including darker pixels where the blue is). -- 141.101.105.234 13:36, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Why no mention of the relation to the current whatif? 141.101.91.91 07:01, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Disagree that the title text is definitely in reference to any line in the song, just because it includes the word "collaborate[d]" 108.162.228.17 07:49, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Surely this comic would have been a perfect opportunity to mention Kurt Vonnegut's fictional Ice-nine? Disappointed in you Randall! Cosmogoblin (talk) 09:42, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I’m not happy with the title-text-explanation. In my eyes the joke is that Randall try to make us believe that Vanilla-icecream is ice IV – and they somehow managed in the 90s to let it exists at high temperatures (for us: normal room temp). --DaB. (talk) 11:31, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I have to disagree for one important reason: (Vanilla) Icecream was produced in high quantities since approx. the 1950's (or even earlier) and not just since the 90's, which is common sense, I think. Imho "Vanilla Ice was produced in small quantities for years" refers more to the fact, that many of Vanilla Ice's tracks consist of different samples of earlier produced songs (such as Under Pressure) or even complete covers (i.e. Play that funky Music). However, Randall might have missed another perfect opportunity for a different joke: Since "Vanilla" is used as expression for "normal" or "trivial" he could have placed it for Ice (I), the "normal" solid water. In that case the Under Pressure reference would have been a bit less obvious, though. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 12:22, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't see any square, faded or otherwise, by label "water vapor". 108.162.219.231 13:04, 7 August 2015 (UTC)