Thanks for reminding me. I’ll try making the ice then starting a fire first ok! 
jayjay
Hey, in Phoenix you can just freeze it as in Arabia. Put your water in an insulated bowl, surround it with a big Styrofoam tube pointed at the night sky zenith, and let it freeze!
If you shape your bowl right you won’t have to shape it with your hands, much. See if this is a good shape. Suspend some stretchy synthetic like weather-balloon rubber after the balloonness has been used up (avail from Edmund Scientific when I was a kid, great item, good for all kinds of fooling around long after the balloon was no longer a balloon). Pour the water into the rubber and it should deform into a pretty good lens. Insulate as above, leave it overnight, and see what you have at sunrise.
PS. Somehow I wonder about shaping a lens by using your hand to melt ice. It sounds like a good way to start frostbite, especially if you can’t get a fire to light. Quite a gamble.
Or you could freeze it as they do in America, by putting a bowl of water in the freezer.
Yeah, yeah, but if you have a freezer, you could strike a spark by shorting the electricity across some tinder! :eek: 
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- Yea, I agree. It’s more of a classroom science-trick than anything like an actual survival tip. Toss this in with the bit about using a piece of clear plastic wrap, and suspending it like a trampoline and putting water in it, to form a lens that focuses the noon sun underneath it. It certainly could work but it’s not really very practical to actually do. The plastic has to have no holes, or it’s going to be dripping right on what you’re trying to light. And the plastic doesn’t really stretch well, so you can’t put a lot of water in it, so the lens has to be way up off the ground to work well (6+ feet). And if it’s breezy, the surface of the water will shimmer, slowing things down as well.
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- Yea, I agree. It’s more of a classroom science-trick than anything like an actual survival tip. Toss this in with the bit about using a piece of clear plastic wrap, and suspending it like a trampoline and putting water in it, to form a lens that focuses the noon sun underneath it. It certainly could work but it’s not really very practical to actually do. The plastic has to have no holes, or it’s going to be dripping right on what you’re trying to light. And the plastic doesn’t really stretch well, so you can’t put a lot of water in it, so the lens has to be way up off the ground to work well (6+ feet). And if it’s breezy, the surface of the water will shimmer, slowing things down as well.
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- One thing I do know that works very well is (if you have one at hand) to break open a car’s headlight or flashlight and use part of the reflector of that.
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Yeah. For a real survival tip, here’s how to start a fire with a can of Coke and a chocolate bar.
I don’t understand how one is a real survival tip, and the other isn’t. After all, if your ice lens is dripping on your tinder, it’s because the sun is directly overhead–which means you’re in the tropics.
PS: check out the aluminum warning on that webpage–I guess we gotta throw out the pots and pans again