In a rare break from federally suspect gambling promotion, Drake has announced his return to music by erecting a giant ice sculpture in a Toronto car park. After a sporadic and drawn-out campaign of vague teasers for a new album called Iceman, the rarely understated rapper unveiled a stack of ice bricks at 81 Bond Street yesterday (April 20), promising that the release date is hidden inside. How long it might take the sculpture to melt is a question beyond the ken of the Pitchfork news team. To get to the bottom of the matter, we rushed off some questions to a theoretical quantum physicist at the University of Toronto: one Professor Valentin Crépel.
We expected Professor Crépel to humor us, but he came prepared, calculating an estimate based on the standard size of a parking space in Toronto (citation provided) and a comparison to average human height. “If the structure were fully solid, this would correspond to roughly 350 tons of ice!” he enthused. “In practice, the structure is almost certainly partially hollow—either deliberately, or because of voids between stacked blocks—so the true mass is lower. Even so, it is almost certainly above 200 tons.” That equates to roughly 2,000 slot machines, or enough ice to make well over a million Onda Civics.
Melting by force would be no simple task. “Roughly 70 gigajoules” is Professor Crépel’s estimate of the necessary energy—“comparable to the annual energy consumption of a Toronto household or to the energy released by 15 tons of TNT” (*not a suggestion). Even this, we are warned, “is a strict lower bound, obtained from the latent heat of fusion of ice to water.” Here the professor linked us to a Wikipedia page for “enthalpy of fusion.” We will assume he knows what he’s talking about.
As such, “estimating the melt time for a structure like this is inherently uncertain. It depends on solar exposure, cloud cover, air temperature, wind, rain…” Nonetheless, he conceded, we did not come here to hedge our bets. We came here to separate the three main sources of heat that will affect the sculpture—namely solar radiation, convection of ambient air, and rain—and come out swinging with a “reasonable and conservative estimate” that accounts for “uncertainties and inefficiencies.” Science!
The professor thus predicted that the structure will remain for at least two weeks. At this stage of the calculation, however, mere thermodynamics fall short. Anticipation for Drake’s first solo record since 2023’s For All the Dogs (not to mention the ensuing Kendrick Lamar feud) is such that fans have already taken matters into their own mittens. We sent the professor footage of mischief-makers smashing pickaxes against the sculpture and trying to kill it with fire. What followed was a comprehensive guide to arctic vandalism. Flames? “Surprisingly ineffective!” They “lose most of their thermal energy to the surrounding air,” the professor explained. Keep your paltry pocket lighters sheathed, would-be saboteurs. Used for a full minute, they “would only melt a few grams of ice at best.”
This leaves the small but lethal matter of chipping and breaking. “Not only does it directly remove ice by the kilogram,” Crépel writes, “but it also increases surface roughness, which in turn enhances both solar and convective heat transfer.” A literal chink, that is, in the sculpture’s armor. Might human touch pose a similar threat to the sculpture’s integrity? Insofar as one can in an email, Professor Crépel scoffed. “Thermally irrelevant.”
Physics, then, suggests the sculpture’s life expectancy is roughly in keeping with Drake’s lengthy Iceman rollout, giving him more time to swan around Toronto in his Packers jacket. Local police have now taken matters into their own hands, cordoning off the sculpture to prevent more people with literal flamethrowers showing up to raise hell. Professor Crépel, meanwhile, continues to operate as a theoretical quantum physicist. His opinions, as far as he knows, do not reflect those of the University of Toronto.
Additional reporting by Nina Corcoran.
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