My mother always asks me not to fill the ice cube tray with water to the brim because it’ll expand and break the box. But doesn’t matter shrink in volume when heat is dissipated, so why does the ice cube expand?
Sorry in advanced, if I word it incorrectly, English is not my first language. Thank you.
In: Physics
Water is a highly polar molecule and regularly forms what are called hydrogen bonds. These are fairly strong interactions that have a set distance from each other. They are weak enough to be broken by heat energy in liquid water, and when they’re breaking/reforming in liquid, the molecules of water can actually get closer than the distance of a hydrogen bond.
At the freezing temperature of water, the hydrogen bonds essentially stop breaking, so all the water molecules form a crystal lattice and are held at a set distance from each other that is farther apart than in liquid water.
This is the crystal structure that water forms and gives it some unique properties such as solid water being less dense than liquid water, and thus floating, and causing water to expand when freezing.
If you’re ever curious about what makes water do all the weird things it does, the answer is literally always “Hydrogen Bonds”
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