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Therefore, ice takes up more space than water. Practically, this makes sense, because ice expands. If you have a liter bottle of ice and a liter bottle of water, then the ice water bottle would be lighter.
The molecules are further away from each other at this point than when the water is warmer. Therefore, ice is less dense that water and floats. When ice melts, the stable crystal structure collapses and is suddenly denser. So hot water also takes up more space than colder water and it floats on top of the cooler water because it is less dense. So why does this even matter? Lakes freeze over on the top in the winter in cold places, which allows fish and other animals to survive below.
If the bottom froze, the whole lake could be frozen and almost nothing could survive the winter in the lake. In the northern or southern oceans, if ice sank, the ice caps would all be at the bottom of the ocean, preventing anything from living there. The ocean floor would be full of ice. Water is made up of 2 atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. The slightly negatively charged oxygen atom of a water molecule is attracted towards the positively charged hydrogen atoms of neighboring water molecules, giving rise to weak hydrogen bonds between them.
In the liquid state, all the water molecules are loosely held together and are free to move. On cooling, the molecules try to come closer, increasing the density. But once the temperature drops below 4 o C, the repelling nature of negative oxygen atoms of the neighboring molecules prevent them from coming any closer. That is when its density starts to fall. As it reaches the solid state ice , the hydrogen bonds become stable and arrange themselves in such a way that the adjacent oxygen atoms are spread far apart from each other, leaving a lot of space between the molecules.
This causes ice to have a higher volume and lesser density than water, making it float.
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