Is ice heavier than water? It certainly feels so, doesn’t it? But is that the truth?

What you need:

Vegetable oil Baby oil, ice, Food colouring Clear glass

What to do:

1. Pour a few drops of food colouring into the glass.

 2. Half fill the glass with vegetable oil. Then pour in the baby oil over it.

 3. It’s hard to tell but the vegetable oil stays below the baby oil. Gently drop the ice cube into the mixture.

4. The ice seems to levitate in the mixture…it neither sinks nor floats. After a while, the ice starts to melt, drop by drop

What happens:

The drops of water slowly separate from the ice and make their way to the bottom of the glass. There, they find the food colouring and merge with it. When all of the ice has melted, you see a layer of coloured water that stays below both oils.

Why?

The answer lies in density. We all know that everything on Earth is made up of small particles called atoms which give mass. The closer the atoms are packed together, the denser an object is said to be.

Floating is related to density. Simply put in order to float in a liquid, an object (or another liquid) needs to have lesser density than that liquid. That’s how baby oil settles on top of the vegetable oil because it is less dense.

Most substances, when they are cooled become more dense. Water is one of the few exceptions to this rule. When water turns into ice, its molecules are not as close together as they were in liquid form. This makes ice less dense than water. That also makes it less dense than vegetable oil, so it floats in the middle of the glass, right over the vegetable oil. When the ice melts, liquid water sinks through the oil to the bottom of the glass because it is more dense.

Picture Credit : Google

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