It is my understanding that within a given medium warmer substances tend to rise and cooler substances fall, i.e. warmer air above cooler.
Assuming the same is true with water then in a lake the cooler water should fall to the bottom while warmer water rises to the top, correct? If so, I would expect that lakes would freeze from the bottom up. Can you please explain why this isn’t the case?
Thanks for your explanation.
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Water is densest as 4C, so the ice at 0C rises to the top.
This is a neat phenomenon with water (and very few other liquids), but becasue of it life exists. If water was like all other liquids and froze bottom up, nothing would have lived through ice ages. Since there was a coating of ice on top, life survived in the water under the ice. No floating ice, no water underneath, no life survives
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