40 Amazing Facts You may not know About Ice | Amazing Facts 4U
- The solid occupies a greater volume of space then an equal amount of the liquid form (About 1/9 more space). That is why ice is less dense than water & floats in water.
- As the solid ice takes more space, water in our pipe will cause them to burst if they freeze.
- As ice floats, lakes freeze from the top down to the bottom. This is clearly important for animals that live on ice, as their habitats would be greatly reduced or not exist at all if ice sank . The wildlife survive in ponds over winter.
- Amazingly the water at the bottom of the deepest oceans is actually -4 degrees Celsius. It is still liquid because water has to expand to form ice. The water at the bottom of the ocean, crushed under all that water pressure, can’t expand to form ice crystals, even though it’s very cold.
- There are actually sixteen types of ice discovered by scientists. Ice IV is the ice we find in the freezer. Difference lies in the structures of the crystals in them. e.g. Ice XI exhibits electric polarization which can be manipulated and reversed. Ice V has the most complicated crystalline structure. Ice III is actually denser than water and would actually sink in water.
- One type called just amorphous ice has no crystalline structure and is the type of ice most often found in space also known as “glassy ice.” On earth, glassy ice can only form when water is rapidly cooled to -137C.
- Amazing fact is that Mars has polar snowstorms of dry ice snowflakes. These snowflakes are microscopic being the size of human red blood cells.
- Pykrete is a mixture of 86 percent ice with 14 percent wood pulp. The pulp reinforces the naturally brittle ice, resulting in an extremely resilient but temporary- substance. The British military considered the viability of building warships out of such substances during World War II but it was found to be unviable.
- The snow is a good insulator and can keep things warm.
- Amazingly the hardness of hard ice is as much as that of concrete.
- Ice crystals can take on any shape or form and these are only limited by one’s imagination.
- In fact you can start a fire with ice.
- Amazingly Eskimos have over 100 words for ice.
- If you could throw a snowball fast enough, it would totally vaporize when it hit a brick wall.
- Ice looks cloudy due to tiny, trapped air bubbles inside which refract the light. This is particularly true in home-made ice cubes.
- For perfectly clear ice, use bottled water, boil it briefly to drive out any air and freeze it in the pan you’ve boiled it in to avoid incorporating any air.
- Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide resembling snow and it’s very cold about -78 degrees Celsius. Unlike water, carbon dioxide does not go though a liquid stage as it cools from a gas stage to a solid stage. Dry ice also doesn’t melt. It changes directly from solid into a vapor or gaseous form. This change is called sublimation.
- Amazingly at a thickness of two inches, Ice will support a man. At a thickness of ten inches, will support 1,000 pounds per square ft.
- Ice is not slippery. Thin layer of ice melts under pressure and this wet layer on top of ice is slippery allowing you to skate smoothly.
- Amazingly the average ice berg weighs 20 Million tons.
- As an iceberg melts , it makes a fizzing sound due to compressed air bubbles being released.
- When the Antarctic sea-ice begins to expand at the beginning of winter, it advances by around 40,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometres) per day, and eventually doubles the size of Antarctica, adding up to an extra 20 million square kilometres of ice around the land mass.
- There is no ice covering Iceland.
- There are few places in the world– Quebec City and Jukasjaarvi, Sweden among them, where you can stay in a hotel made of ice. One temporary Igloo hotel built in Sweden every year has a capacity to sleep 100 people.
- Permanent snow and ice cover about 12% (21 million square km’s) of the Earth’s land surface. 80% of the world’s fresh water is locked up as ice or snow.
- Amazing fact is that a single snowstorm can drop 40 million tons of snow, carrying the energy equivalent to 120 atom bombs.
- The most snow produced in a single snowstorm is 4.8 meters (15.75ft) at Mt Shasta Ski Bowl, California (USA) between 13 and 19 February 1959
- Amazing Fact is that three quarters of the fresh water in the entire world is contained in glaciers. The seasonal glacial runoff is an incredibly important source of fresh water on earth.
- The Greenland Ice Sheet covers 80% of that land mass At the bottom of it, miles below the surface, there is ice that froze over a hundred thousand years ago. Scientists have extracted core samples of the ice from there. It contains a record of climate change all throughout history also using air samples trapped inside the ice which gives information about the temperatures and greenhouse gas levels of past hundreds of centuries.
- Amazing fact is that if the Antarctic ice cap melted, it is estimated that the world sea level could rise by an average of 180 feet (55 metres). This rise is not just because of melting but due to warmer water occupying more space.
- Sea ice is important to regulating global temperature, because the white, bright ice reflects back 80% of the light that hits it and helps to keep the ocean cool.
- Algae grow between the cracks in sea ice and even on the underside of the ice, providing food for tiny shrimp-like krill throughout the dark, cold arctic winter.
- Amazingly the Saturn rings are made up of millions of ice crystals, some as big as houses and others as small as specks of dust.
- The largest piece of ice to fall to earth was an ice block 6 meters (20 ft) across that fell in Scotland on 13 August 1849.
- Antarctica is the best place to find meteorites. Dark meteorites show up against the white expanse of ice and snow and don’t get covered by vegetation.
- The largest hailstone recorded fell on 14 April 1986 in Bangladesh weighing 1kg (2.25lbs). The hailstorm reportedly killed 92 people.
- The greatest snowfall ever in a single storm was 189 inches at the Mount Shasta Ski Bowl in February, 1959.
- Amazing fact discovered is that nearly three percent of the ice in Antarctic glaciers is penguin urine.
- Most snowflakes form with 6 tips or branches. Generally, the colder it is when the snowflake is formed the sharper and more defined the tips will be.
- It has been reported that Niagra falls on the 30th of March, 1847 froze. The six hundred and twenty thousand tons of water each minute ceased to flow. People even dared to ride in carriages one-third of the way across the river towards the Canada shore.
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