2/4/12 Ice Enigma

       As you can tell, I am a bored person. So today I decided it would be a most genius idea to put my cup of water in the freezer. I forgot about it until an hour or so ago and I took it out. To my surprise, the water was now ice and got bigger! This of course made me a question why is the bottle no longer full of liquid and solid instead?

      I checked online and some realiable sources for the answer to my deliema and found some fascinating information. It turns out the freezer makes everything colder and loses something called heat energy. Heat energy is made when these things called particles, which are the tiny little things that make up everything in the universe, bump together. Heat energy is basically warm, so the freezer makes the water lose warmth. Because the heat energy comes from the the particals in things bumping around, and water has the particals loose and bumping around so thats why we can’t hold it: the particles arent close enough!

The particles in a liquid, spread apart and moving and bumping!

When the heat energy was lost, the particles stopped bumping around and stayed close together. This makes the water harder because the particles that make it up are pushed close together.  This makes ice, which we can hold because the particles are close together!

Solid particles: Close and snug!

           This turns the water, which has the loose, but not too loose particles, (also called a liquid) into ice which has its particles close together, making it a solid. But this has to happen at a temperature. Temperature is an amount of heat energy something has. So when the temperature of water goes under 0°C, which is very cold (colder than outside in winter!) the heat energy leaves the water, making the particals move together and become ice. It truly fascinated me.  I felt like barfing rainbows!