¶ 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.”
