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This Week's Experiment - #318 Turning Ice
This week's experiment started as a very simple one, but as I played with it,
it grew a bit. It all started with me watching an ice cube melt. (Those
of you that have been on the list a while know that it does not take a lot to
entertain me.) I promise that this will be more interesting than just
watching ice melt. You will need:
ice cubes
a bowl
warm water
food coloring
Before we get into the things that sidetracked me, lets do the experiment
that I started to do. Fill the bowl with warm water. Place an ice cube
into the water. Now watch it as it melts. Don't get bored and give up
yet. Watch for a minute and something should happen. The ice cube will
tip over on its side. A short while later, it will turn again, and then
again. It will keep turning over every minute or so until there is no ice
left.
Why did it turn over? The warm water was melting the ice that was under the
surface, but the top of the ice cube melted more slowly. This caused the
ice cube to get top-heavy. It became unstable and tipped over. Then the
same thing happened again and again.
One problem that I ran into was being able to tell whether the ice cube was
turning over or just rocking a bit. To make it easier, I made some special
ice cubes. Of course that meant clearing some space in the freezer, and the
ice cream was taking up a lot of space. After my snack, I put a few drops
of red food coloring into some water and then filled the ice cube tray
half-full with the red water. I put that in the freezer and let it freeze
solid. Then I added some very cold, plain water. The plain water must be
very cold to start with (I stirred it with some ice) to keep it from melting
the red ice. Quickly putting this back into the freezer, I wound up with
ice cubes that were half-red and half clear.
Make some red and clear ice cubes and try the experiment again. It is much
easier to see when the ice cube tips, but you will also see other interesting
things. The red ice melts, and you get streamers of red water flowing
downwards from the ice cube. Though the ice is less dense than the water
(which causes it to float), the very cold water of the newly melted ice is
more dense than the surrounding water, so it sinks. It is not the coloring
that makes it denser. You can see this even without the food coloring, but
the color makes it much easier to see. Very cold water sinks, but when it
gets even colder, it suddenly expands, rises and freezes into ice which
floats. This is just one of the many things that make water one of the
strangest chemicals we know of.
Have a good week.
These experiments are from Robert Krampf - The Happy Scientist
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