If molecules expand with heat and pull tighter when it is cold, why do pipes burst when it is freezing?

Answer 1

Water is a very weird substance. Solid water (ice) has a lower density than liquid water. This is very different from the vast majority of substances.

Since water's density decreases when it freezes, its volume increases, thus bursting pipes.

Answer 2

Ice is an exception to the general rule. Water when it freezes expands, because water crystals use a really strange sort of bond called a 'hydrogen bond' which takes up a lot of space. As far as I know, water is the only substance to expand when it freezes.

Answer 3

molecules don't pull tighter when its cold. they just condense together. and when water freezes, the molecules aren't flowing like liquids anymore. It becomes a hard piece of solid that is still expanding which breaks pipes open.

Answer 4

Funny thing about water, as it freezes, its density decreases (takes up more space) as the molecules align into the crystalline structure of ice. That is why ice floats. If you fill a bottle with water and freeze it, it will break the bottle as the ice expands.

Answer 5

water expands as it freezes.

Think of a bunch of marbles in a bag like water, flowing around. They're all close and loose. If you were to connect them all with glue so they stayed in the form of a block, that's ice. It has more structure, so it takes more space.

That's why you don't fill ice trays all the way, why cold weather destroys roads, why not to put a coke into the freezer...

The extra space in the structure explains why ice floats, even though it's water in water.

Answer 6

Water is strange in this way: it expands when it freezes. That's one of the very important properties of water. It explains why pipes burst, why a can of soda bulges or bursts in the freezer, and why ice cubes float in a glass of water.

Answer 7

Unlike most other (perhaps all other) things water expands when it freezes. Most (perhaps all) other things contract when they freeze. Contracting when cold seems more intuitive than expanding. A crowd of people that's being less active should be able to take up less space.

Answer 8

Most things do continue to contact as the temp. drops. Water is different. It contracts down to a certain temperature and then starts to expand before freezing. I knew why, once, but my basic chemistry class was long ago. Ask a chemistry teacher or consult a beginning chemistry test.

Answer 9

Substances that crystallize when frozen, such as water, actually expand when they crystallize. When the temperature drops, water will contract until it starts to crystallize. Water expands as the crystallization happens. When the water is fully crystallized, it will begin to contract again.

Answer 10

water when frozen expands not all things in physics are the same