NY RAT:

It has been a long time since high school, but I remember the glass of water in the bell jar demonstration we had in science class. When you draw a vacumn in an area that has water in it, you lower the temperature required to boil the water so that the water will actually boil at whatever the room temperature is.

We never tried it with ice, but the same thing would occur and that the ice would start to melt and the water created would start to boil, and you could never draw a vacumn until all the water, formerly ice, boiled out of the container.

Bountyhunter