Ice
Index Entry
Ice:
"Children can learn from their remembered observation of the rotational progression of angles that the hour and minute hands of a clock have moved; that the tree and the vine have grown; and that the pond's top has frozen into ice that surprisingly floats--whereas getting colder means getting denser and heavier per given volume, which would suggest that ice should sink to the pond's bottom.
"But the crystallization of water forms a 'space frame' whose members do not fill allspace, and whose vacated space embraces and incorporates oxygen from the atmosphere--which makes ice lighter than water. The crystallization of water takes up more room than does the water in its liquid nonform condition. Crystallization is structurally and vectorially linear; it is not allspace-filling. Crystalline structurings are interspersed by additional atmospheric molecules occupying more volume (ergo having less mass); the process of crystallization cracks open its closed containers. If ice did not float, if ice sank to the bottom, life would have long since disappeared from Planet Earth."
