It’s a hot summer day and you go in the house for a nice glass of (insert favorite beverage). Upon getting your beverage you discover it’s cool, but not cold enough to quench your burning thirst. “No problem,” you say, “I’ll just drop in a couple of icecubes.” You get the icecubes from the freezer, drop them in the glass and snap! pop! Little cracks and fissures appear all over the cube.
Why is this?
My guess is that the water molecules in the icecube are contracting, as that’s what water molecules do when they change from a solid state to a liquid state. The contraction happens in certian areas and similar to plate tectonics there are areas where the molecules go in opposite directions. That’s the place for a crack to appear. Am I close?
I actually saw an icecube shatter doing this. I dropped it into the glass and crack!, I had a dozen or so little fragents.