When drilling a hole into a rock, filling it with water, and freezing it, why does it expand outward to break the rock rather than extrude out of the hole that was drilled?
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Water is a really weird thing, as far as physics is concerned. It’s a polar molecule — the oxygen atom “holds onto” electrons more tightly than the hydrogens do. This gives rise to “hydrogen bonds” between the hydrogen of one water molecule and the oxygen of another.
The strength of this bond is usually defeated by the thermal energy of the water — the energy the individual molecules have as they move about in the liquid state. So, normally, water doesn’t get the chance to establish them very much.
As you start taking thermal energy out of the water, though, these hydrogen bonds can assert themselves and begin to lock the water into ice. Past four degrees celsius, the hydrogen bonds become stronger, and so ice expands as it freezes.
Saliently, it does this in all directions, because what’s stopping it?
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