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Water

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fennster | 19:39 Sun 27th Feb 2005 | Technology
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How can water weigh less when it has an increase in mass, right now bare with me, when water is frozen it inrcreases in size ( mass ) yet in weighs less because it now floats. why is this it has increased in size so it should sink, is this not correct. Plus if this were not the case would it mean that life would never of evolved on this planet as when the whole planet was frozen , if the ice weighed more when frozen all the ice would of sunk to the sea bead and frozen it and life could not of evolved from the single cell ameba's ( i know thats not spelt right i'm stoned ok ) , any idea's?
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You have your ideas backward I am afraid. When ice is formed a volume of water becomes a large voume of ice its mass is unchanged. What is changed however is it's density the same mass is held in a larger voume making it less dense. Being less dense it floats on it's denser liquid form. I wouldn't worry too much about it though you are in good company, people regularly say hot air rises, when in fact less dense air rises.
Water is unusual in that it is at its most dense at around 4 degrees centigrade, so water at this temperature will always sink to the bottom. That's how come fish don't freeze, even when the water is iced over.

Water actually does a lot of odd things, often to do with the fact that as a molecule it has a small negative electric charge on the Oxygen atom and positive on the hydrogens and is physically bent like a boomerang.

The University oy London (south bank) has a list of 41 strange properties of water and their eplanations here:

http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/anmlies.html

you want number 7.

Pray what is this to do with Internet & Technology?
I think the answer to that is bracketed at the end of the question) :c)

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