What happens if ice is denser than water

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Think about how surface ice might affect things like aquatic life, water temperature, oxygen levels and circulation patterns. Imagining a world where ice was denser than water and sank, rather than floated, consider these questions:. As you work through this course you will need various resources to help you complete some of the activities.

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Re Taemyr comment about lover albedo of ice. As David Richerby correctly notes, if ice fell to bottom, if cold lasts long enough, body of water would freeze bottom to top. Then, even during summer it might not melt all the way to the bottom ice being protected by cold water on top of it , and ice would accumulate until frozen solid bottom to top.

Not good for complex life. Effect on plant life on continents would be minimal. Seasons would be more pronounced, but plants can handle that. So coal should be possible - and also industrial revolution.

So if advanced life and space-faring civilization could develop on such planet, they would have great advantage in space travel. Improve this answer. Firelight 6 6 silver badges 15 15 bronze badges. Peter M. All the roads were covered with inches of ice. When spring came, the ice was still in the streets with a sheen of melt water over it, and the city had to send equipment to all the streets to break the ice and pile it beside the roads because it would not melt by itself!

The runaway effect that drives drives snowball earth is that ice have a higher albedo than water meaning more heat is reflected. If ice does not float less earth would be covered by ice, and the albedo change would be less significant.

Evolution does not work that way. There also is life without freezing possible closer to volcanoes and in salt lakes. But yes, as I said in my answer, chance of more complex life evolving are lower but not zero. The layer of ice insulates the liquid below so most of the water stays liquid and the amount of freezing is mostly governed by how cold it gets. If ice didn't float, freezing would happen from the bottom up. The amount of freezing would be governed by how long it stayed cold, since any drop in surface temperature below freezing point would cause more freezing.

You'd probably find whole bodies of water freezing solid and staying frozen most of the year, increasing albedo a lot. For instance, would this describe an earth-analogous methane-ocean planet? Show 3 more comments.

Salt water is denser than fresh water, and when ice forms, salt accumulates into droplets called brine, which are typically expelled back into the ocean , and what was left in brine pockets drains out over time, too, leaving air pockets behind. Ice floats better in salt water! I was thinking one thing and typed something completely different.

The surface of the sea is usually warmer than the deep ocean. Warmth is exported upwards, and cold downwards. If this process continued unchecked, the sea would be uninhabitable.

However, this doesn't happen because ice is bizarrely less dense than water. This is because of its very unusual crystalline structure and so ice floats on water, even warm water. Because ice is less dense than water, the deep oceans can never freeze, even below zero degrees because to freeze they would have to expand and the pressure prevents this. Any ice that forms will float to the surface and be melted by the sun. In an alternative universe where ice is more dense than water Two things: Ice would sink, and so would not be melted by the sun or rising warm water.

Barring some heat source, the ocean would fill up with ice from the bottom up. Ice would occupy less volume, so increasing pressure would raise the freezing point of water. The deep oceans would be permanently frozen, just as the core of Jupiter is frozen, not because it's cold, but because the pressure is so intense.

Neither option would be good for us humans. Add a comment. My conclusion, it would not be good at all. Making the north ice cap denser to sink, should reduce the total volume and actually lower the ocean levels just a little bit, a large part would depend on how much denser the ice is.

Antarctica is a completely different issue. Note: I know You asked a different question, but you cannot separate cause from effect. ZioByte ZioByte So unless you change from water ice to something else, it wouldn't work. Alternatively if life had evolved on a world with water that behaved like this then life would be adapted to it.

This is very fundamental. Try having a computer with no "bits"; You can actually do that analog computers but it's literally another world. Even if You can do the same computation with both they actually have almost nothing in common.

Tim B Thomas Thomas 11 1 1 bronze badge. Overall a detailed answer to what would now be considered an off-topic question. Please edit for readability paragraphs are important. This property of water is critical for all life on earth. If water was most dense at the freezing point, then in winter the very cold water at the surface of lakes would sink, the lake could freeze from the bottom up.

And, with water being such a good insulator due to its heat capacity , some frozen lakes might not totally thaw in summer. The real-world explanation of water density is actually more complicated, as the density of water also varies with the amount of material that is dissolved in it.

Water in nature contains minerals, gasses, salts, and even pesticides and bacteria, some of which are dissolved. As more material is dissolved in a gallon of water then that gallon will weigh more and be more dense— ocean water is denser than pure water. We already said ice floats on water because it is less dense, but ice of a special kind can be denser than normal water. Heavy water, D 2 O instead of H 2 O, is water in which both hydrogen atoms have been replaced with deuterium, the isotope of hydrogen containing one proton and one neutron.

Heavy water is indeed heavier than normal water which contains a tiny amount of heavy water molecules naturally , and heavy-water ice will sink in normal water. The instrument to measure the density of a liquid is called a hydrometer. It is one of the simplest of scientific-measuring devices, and you can even make your own out of a plastic straws see links below. More often, though, it is made of glass and looks a lot like a thermometer. It consists of a cylindrical stem and a weighted bulb at the bottom to make it float upright.

The hydrometer is gently lowered into the liquid to be measured until the hydrometer floats freely. There are etched or marked lines on the device so the user can see how high or low the hydrometer is floating. In less dense liquids the hydrometer will float lower, while in more dense liquids it will float higher. Since water is the "standard" by which other liquids are measured, the mark for water is probably labeled as "1.

Hydrometers have many uses, not the least being to measure the salinity of water for science classes in schools. They are also used in the dairy industry to get estimates of the fat content of milk, as milk with higher fat content will be less dense than lower-fat milk. Hydrometers are often used by people who make beer and wine at home, as it offers an indication of how much sugar is in the liquid, and lets the brewer know how far along the fermentation process has gone.

Do you think you know a lot about water properties? Looking at water, you might think that it's the most simple thing around. Pure water is practically colorless, odorless, and tasteless.

But it's not at all simple and plain and it is vital for all life on Earth. Where there is water there is life, and where water is scarce, life has to struggle or just "throw in the towel. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.

Chemistry Expert. Helmenstine holds a Ph. She has taught science courses at the high school, college, and graduate levels. Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format.

Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.