Does Ice Sink in Water?

Photo by: Andreas Weith, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>,
via Wikimedia Commons

Drop a cube of ice in a bucket of water and see if it sinks.

It will not, because ice is less dense than water. In comparison, rocks are more dense and they sink in water.

The fact that ice floats is very good for the fish and us. If ice was denser, lots of it would have sunk and gone to the bottom of lakes and the sea. In many places it would not have melted in that case and would have made the bottom of lakes and the sea very cold.

Luckily for us ice floats and melts as soon the air gets warmer in spring.  

Srinivasan Ramani 


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