9. Extended Questions
a. What happens if the polar ice caps melt? If the polar ice caps melt that will have an effect on the sea levels. There is a difference between the melting of ice on the land and floating ice burgs. With the ice burgs they are already in the ocean and displacing water so when they melt it doesn’t effect the sea level as much as the added water from land based ice.
b. What other questions do you have about this Science Inquiry Experience? Just as an inquiry and looking at what I know about ice. I know these are some things that I should already know but here you go. When I did the melting ice experiment it looked like the water raised a little bit. It did not rise enough to break the surface tension and flow over the side of the bowl. With matter you know that the molecules come closer together as they get colder and freeze so you would think that ice would be more dense than water but ice cubes do the opposite float meaning that they are less dense and the volume has increased. So even though there is some ice above the water it shouldn’t increase the sea level much because as the ice melts it actually becomes denser and takes up less space.
Meg,
ReplyDeleteExcellent analysis for 9a. As for 9b, I think that you know plenty about ice; I am always amazed by the power of the weak hydrogen bond - not only do they hold our DNA strands together, but they are responsible for the more ordered (and therefore less dense) state of water. I always cringe when a student says that hydrogen bonds don't really matter! Amy
It is interesting what happened isn't it. I was expecting a little bit to overfllow, but none did.
ReplyDeleteI happen to agree with Chemgal. I ended up having to do the experiment twice. The first time the water did overflow. It was probably someone hitting into it. The second time I did it I had the same results; the water did not overflow. It was upsetting to me at first to have the wrong results, but I think that makes me think, my students can sometimes get the wrong results. In science it's not always about getting the right results. It is about getting results and learning.
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