# Two completely unrelated questions about ice **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 13, 2010, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271 "2010-05-13T04:32:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Saganist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Saganist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saganist)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/1 "2010-05-13T04:32:43Z")
1. What positive effect (if any) does frozen water have for Earth life? Or, would life have developed if water didn’t become solid till, say, -100 degrees Centigrade? We would have _really_ cold rainstorms but I can’t think of anything that would be detrimental to life. 2. How did ancient cultures explain the fact that water turns into this solid thing when it gets cold enough? I’m thinking of places where the four-element theory of matter was the latest in peer-reviewed publications. I assume ice is still considered water, but did anyone propose a reason for it to become solid instead of getting colder and colder while staying a liquid? Did they know about salt lowering the freezing temperature? What was the reasoning for why that happened? Surely somebody thought about these things rather than just say that’s the way things are. ---
**Author:** ![Saganist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Saganist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saganist)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/2 "2010-05-13T04:41:02Z")
I should amend the qualifier “ancient” to mean all time periods before the atomic theory of matter was known. Wikipedia says roughly before 1800. ---
**Author:** ![tallcoldone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e9a140/32.png) [@tallcoldone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tallcoldone)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/3 "2010-05-13T17:17:58Z")
Water filling cracks in rock, then freezing helps break it into smaller pieces, speeding erosion and the creation or renewal of soil. Same with glacial activity. Also, snow and ice forming on mountains, etc. create a reservoir of fresh water that is delivered slowly as it melts, leveling out the wet-to-dry cycles downstream. ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/4 "2010-05-13T17:28:32Z")
Ice is less dense than liquid water, meaning that it floats on the top of ponds, lakes and rivers. This allows aquatic life to continue to exist in liquid water during the winter. The life cycles of fish, plants etc underwater are probably very affected by this, and the adaptations (or lack thereof) of different species will have resulted in their geographic distributions. Life would, I think, be quite different if water never froze. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/5 "2010-05-13T17:40:01Z")
> [@iophobon](#): > > 1. What positive effect (if any) does frozen water have for Earth life? Or, would life have developed if water didn’t become solid till, say, -100 degrees Centigrade? We would have _really_ cold rainstorms but I can’t think of anything that would be detrimental to life. Weather would be a heck of a lot more variable, because [water serves as a heat-buffer at its melting point:](http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/water/heat.html) > [@](#): > > the heat of fusion for water (the heat needed to melt one gram of ice) also represents the amount of heat released by a gram of water when it turns into ice. This means that when a large body of water, like a lake, freezes over in the winter, it releases a lot of heat into the atmosphere. This warms the air, and makes the environment near the body of water less cold. Temperatures are never as cold in the winter if you live near a large lake. What with your typical enzymatic reaction [slowing down by a factor of 2 for each 10°C shift in temperature](http://books.google.com/books?id=ANT8VB14oBUC&pg=PA838&lpg=PA838&dq=q10+biochemistry+temperature&source=bl&ots=cxUK6xLgdb&sig=t1JsWqhdMaa-hJHCvi7cgTDGOVI&hl=en&ei=xTjsS_ajHMSBlAeCp723CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=q10%20biochemistry%20temperature&f=false), the lower temperatures would require metabolic adaptation. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/6 "2010-05-13T17:46:21Z")
> [@mnemosyne](#): > > Ice is less dense than liquid water, meaning that it floats on the top of ponds, lakes and rivers. This allows aquatic life to continue to exist in liquid water during the winter. The life cycles of fish, plants etc underwater are probably very affected by this, and the adaptations (or lack thereof) of different species will have resulted in their geographic distributions. Life would, I think, be quite different if water never froze. More to the point, the layer of floating ice insulates the water below and keeps it from cooling down as much. If the water stayed liquid, it could mix freely and exchange more heat with the atmosphere, so it would end up cooling to pretty much the same temperature as the air: i.e., much colder than it does when protected by a layer of ice. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/7 "2010-05-13T17:47:08Z")
Frozen water increases surface albedo, which in turn cools the climate. Of course, this can be [carried too far](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth). ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/8 "2010-05-13T17:47:12Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > Weather would be a heck of a lot more variable, because [water serves as a heat-buffer at its melting point:](http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/water/heat.html) > What with your typical enzymatic reaction [slowing down by a factor of 2 for each 10°C shift in temperature](http://books.google.com/books?id=ANT8VB14oBUC&pg=PA838&lpg=PA838&dq=q10+biochemistry+temperature&source=bl&ots=cxUK6xLgdb&sig=t1JsWqhdMaa-hJHCvi7cgTDGOVI&hl=en&ei=xTjsS_ajHMSBlAeCp723CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=q10%20biochemistry%20temperature&f=false), the lower temperatures would require metabolic adaptation. But latent heat and water’s high specific heat don’t have anything to do with freezing. That just represents the energy difference between the two phases. In our water-never-freezes model, there’s no reason to assume this would change. I mean, there’s nothing special about the fact that at two different energy levels, one is water and the other is ice. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/9 "2010-05-13T18:02:37Z")
> [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > That just represents the energy difference between the two phases. Yes, and if the phase doesn’t change at a particular temp, there won’t be any large energy uptake or release at that temp. It’d take 1 cal for 1 g of water to go from -0.5°C to 0.5°C, rather than the 79.6 cal it takes to melt 1 g of ice in our everyday world. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/10 "2010-05-13T19:24:11Z")
> [@iophobon](#): > > 1. How did ancient cultures explain the fact that water turns into this solid thing when it gets cold enough? I’m thinking of places where the four-element theory of matter was the latest in peer-reviewed publications. I assume ice is still considered water, but did anyone propose a reason for it to become solid instead of getting colder and colder while staying a liquid? Did they know about salt lowering the freezing temperature? What was the reasoning for why that happened? Surely somebody thought about these things rather than just say that’s the way things are. IIRC, the Greeks conceived of their four elements as combinations of heat and moisture. ThusL Fire – hot and dry Water – cold and wet Air – hot and wet (this was Greece, right by the sea) Earth – cold and dry. In that conceptual framework, they probably assumed that freezing removed the moisture from the water, turning from cold and wet to cold and dry and thus a solid like earth. If asked where it went, they would probably say into the hot and wet air (and it would come back from that). It explained things pretty neatly (if incorrectly). ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/11 "2010-05-13T19:45:27Z")
Another effect on life: permafrost. In very cold northern climates, plant growth is limited by frozen ground, which makes it very difficult for roots to grow, animals to burrow, respiration to take place, dead material to decompose, etc. If water never froze, I suspect we’d see a lot more plants and biodiversity in the arctic regions than we do right now. But to address the overall question: I don’t think a lack of ice would prevent life from forming. After all, the current evolutionary theories put the development of life in either intertidal beaches or deep-sea vents. Neither of those are affected by ice in any way. However, the lack of ice could limit the number of environments that animals could cope with. I think weather extremes would be particularly significant, with bigger swings between hot/cold and dry/wet seasons due to the lack of ice and snow to moderate temperature changes and store water for later release. A lot of land-based life would probably have to operate more like desert life does - short bursts of life at opportune seasons, with long periods of dormancy to survive the extremes. Taller and more durable mountain ranges (due to decreased erosion) would also contribute to extremes. As air rises over mountains, it dumps moisture and leaves the other side dry. South America is a great example, where you go from a drenched rain forest on one side of the Andes to extreme deserts on the other side. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/12 "2010-05-13T19:48:36Z")
life may very well have developed with water having different physical characteristics though it likely would not be life as we know it which developed which our current situation. ---
**Author:** ![Saganist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Saganist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saganist)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/13 "2010-05-13T21:14:52Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > IIRC, the Greeks conceived of their four elements as combinations of heat and moisture. ThusL > > Fire – hot and dry > Water – cold and wet > Air – hot and wet (this was Greece, right by the sea) > Earth – cold and dry. > > In that conceptual framework, they probably assumed that freezing removed the moisture from the water, turning from cold and wet to cold and dry and thus a solid like earth. If asked where it went, they would probably say into the hot and wet air (and it would come back from that). > > It explained things pretty neatly (if incorrectly). Thanks, this is an interesting explanation. Do you have a cite for the idea that they thought the four elements were one level up from the two more basic elements of heat and moisture? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2010, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/14 "2010-05-13T23:18:08Z")
Here’s a chart in [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_element#Classical_elements_in_Greece), though you can find it in any source discussing the concepts. It says the concept comes from Aristotle. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/15 "2010-05-14T08:30:02Z")
> [@iophobon](#): > > 1. How did ancient cultures explain the fact that water turns into this solid thing when it gets cold enough? I’m thinking of places where the four-element theory of matter was the latest in peer-reviewed publications. I assume ice is still considered water, but did anyone propose a reason for it to become solid instead of getting colder and colder while staying a liquid? Did they know about salt lowering the freezing temperature? What was the reasoning for why that happened? Surely somebody thought about these things rather than just say that’s the way things are. The earliest Greek philosophers held that there was just _one_ basic element, that transformed into different forms. The first philosopher, Thales, taught that this basic substance was water. It seems more than likely that he came to this conclusion because he saw water can indeed quite easily transform into both a solid and a gas (along with the fact that water is necessary for all life). Over the next few generations, several alternatives to water as the basic substance were put forward by other philosophers, for various reasons: the indefinite (Anaximander); air (Anaximenies); earth (Xenophanes); and fire (Heraclitus). All of these ideas seemed to have both advantages and disadvantages. Eventually Empedocles attempted to get teh best of all these theories by proposing that there are four basic elements, earth, air, fire, and water, which do not themselves transform, but rather mix together in different proportions to form all the different sorst of substance we find around us. Aristotle took over this theory and popularized it, adding the stuff about the opposed pairs of qualities (hot-cold, wet-dry). ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/16 "2010-05-15T16:36:10Z")
As far as life is concerned, there are a lot of advantages to the water-storing feature of frozen water on mountains and in glaciers. If the Earth’s temperature range included the freeze point, we’d get those benefits. That wold be true whether ice froze at 0C or -100C. But if we assume the Earth’s temperature range is the same as it really is, but water froze at -100C, then we’d not get those benefits. Oceanic life would be mostly unaffected, but a lot more of the dry land would be uninhabitable by our typical flora and fauna. There’d be a lot more deserts. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-completely-unrelated-questions-about-ice/539271/17 "2010-05-15T22:24:13Z")
As **mnemosyne** said: > [@mnemosyne](#): > > Ice is less dense than liquid water, meaning that it floats on the top of ponds, lakes and rivers. This allows aquatic life to continue to exist in liquid water during the winter. The life cycles of fish, plants etc underwater are probably very affected by this, and the adaptations (or lack thereof) of different species will have resulted in their geographic distributions. Life would, I think, be quite different if water never froze. The point is not that water freezes. But water is one of the few (or the only?) common molecule that is less dense frozen than as a liquid. If water was a typical substance, the oceans could easily freeze solid during a prolonged winter. As it is, ice is effectively insulation preventing the deeper levels of water from freezing quickly. Almost all life that we know of requires some permanent source of liquid water.