2.2 What if ice was denser than water?
Figure 4
You’ve seen that water’s unusual property of being less dense as a solid than as a liquid leads to ice floating on water.
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:
- What might the consequences be for aquatic life?
- How might denser ice affect small-scale bodies of water, like ponds and lakes?
- How might denser ice affect oceans?
- Could denser ice have far-reaching effects on the evolution of life?