Just For Fun

Before we move on and look at how heat changes matter, I wanted to do a simple but fun experiment with Selena.

I gave Selena an empty water bottle and marked it with a black line, she had to put water in it just up to this line. I asked her what would happen if we put this in the freezer. Of course she said the water would turn to ice. I asked her if she thought there would be any other changes, and she said no the freezer will slow the molecules down binding them together to make ice.

We put it in the freezer and left it there for 24 hours. Selena got quite a surprise when we took it out the next day.

She didn’t expect that the ice would extend above our marked water line. There was truly nothing left to do then to sit it on our counter and allow it to thaw. Selena had to make a hypothesis as to rather there would be the same amount of water we started with or more. She was kind of stumped on this question and only said “I truly do not know.”

She tried to mark where the ice came to on the bottle but due to the cold the pen wouldn’t mark on it. Great thinking there though.

She finally got the answer to her dilemma, when the ice melted she had the same amount of water as she did when she started. She had fun with this experiment, while it was very simple, just the amazement of the frozen water having denser properties, being heavier and expanding like it did was quite a thrill for her.