Why do lakes and rivers only freeze on the surface and not all the way through?
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The reason for this is closely related to the density of ice and the properties of water. After the liquid water becomes solid ice, the spacing between water molecules will become larger, that is, the density will become smaller, from the weight of ice becomes lighter than water, and because of this, the ice will float on the surface of the water. This is why ice floats on the surface of the water instead of sinking to the bottom. Thus, when rivers and lakes have a layer of ice on the surface, the ice floating on the water’s surface will isolate the outside air from the water below. At this time, the temperature of the ice surface and the temperature of the outside air will remain the same, the bottom layer of ice and the top layer of water, which is often referred to as the ice and water mixture temperature of zero degrees, and further down, the temperature of the water will gradually increase. In addition, water and ice are poor conductors of heat, not good at conducting heat, and the temperature of the upper layer of ice can not be effectively transferred downward. Therefore, in rivers and lakes’ ice can only stay in the surface layer, if the external temperature is low ice will be thicker, not so low ice will be thinner, but not all frozen into ice.
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