Why does Water expand when it freezes?

Question

As far as I know...When something gets warmer it expands.. Now why the h**l will ice expand if it's gets colder?

Answer 1

becuz water if self has no deinite shape and only takes shape of whats holding it

becuz the water molecules in the air start slowing down and add on to the consisting ice  

Answer 2

Solids have more mass than liquids.

Answer 3

Well, from an energy point of view, the conception that ice expands when it gets colder seems to conflict with the conservation of energy. In all truths, once ice is formed, it does not expand as it gets colder. It actually shrinks becoming more dense as it gets colder.

hope this helped :)

You can read this if you've really got time on your hands and want to understand the part of mechanical, kinetic, etc energy and what it plays in expanding & whatnot. ;P Enjoy!

http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/ind...  

Answer 4

Water is unusual but not unique. Other substances that expand on freezing are the semimetals antimony and bismuth.

What happens is that the shape of the molecules is such that they don't stack together efficiently, which has to happen when a liquid freezes into a crystalline solid.

Because the stacking of the molecules in ice is not efficient, the solid takes up more space than the liquid. That's why ice floats on water, which is a good thing - otherwise lakes would freeze from the bottom up and freeze solid, so fish couldn't survive the winter.

Water does contract on cooling up to a point. When it gets to about 4C, it has its greatest density. Then it expands slightly as it is cooled further, and expands even more on freezing.

Substances that do this are called "ice-like."

Answer 5

Because the water molecule's are freezing and becoming a solid so the they're kind of like atoms which solids are mabe of.  

Answer 6

the density of water changes depending on the tempurature. the ice typically expands to to the change of volumetric pressure undergone by the change of denisty (mass/volume). the higher the density, is normally due to an increase in volume.

Answer 7

The molecules of water bond together in such a way so that they form hexagons, leaving more open space between them.