Thread: Water and Kelvin

Silly question but does Ice contract in volume the further you go toward Zero degrees Kelvin? (after the initial expansion)

It depends on what you mean by ice for one, but we'll start with water ice.

Water ice is actually less dense than it's liquid form. What happens is, at its freezing point water forms a lattice structure and becomes a solid that has more space in it so it actually expands when it is frozen (because it is less dense, meaning it takes up more volume for it's mass). There it is a solid and it should remain in that same lattice until it melts above the freezing point.

You can think of it like this. At some high temperature the table that your computer is on is a liquid. Right now it's frozen. If you make it colder, will it shrink?

Some strange things happen to noble gases at low kelvin, but other than them this is generally the deal.