https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Cradle

While researching for his upcoming book, the narrator travels to Ilium, New York, the hometown of the late Felix Hoenikker, a co-creator of the atomic bomb and Nobel laureate physicist, to interview Hoenikker's children, coworkers, and other acquaintances. There, he learns of a substance called ice-nine, created for military use by Hoenikker and now likely in the possession of his three adult children. Ice-nine is an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature and becomes a seed crystal upon contact with any ordinary liquid water, causing that liquid water to instantly transform into more ice-nine.

Also a pretty bitchin' Joe Satriani song.