What Really Happens When Water Ice Melts?

Who would be so insane even to study such an effect? Well apparently, chemical companies find no laughing matter regarding such processes and are barely waiting to get their hands on the model followed by the water molecules during the melting process of ice. What appears to be as a well known natural process for most of us has, in fact, no mathematical model describing the behavior of the molecules inside the solid water crystal.

Thus, David van der Spoel, a computational chemist at Uppsala University in Sweden, decided to finally make a simulation of the process that takes place during the melting of frozen water molecules. According to data extracted from the computer simulations, as the water crystals receive surplus energy through heat, they have the tendency to return to a more stable low-energy state, and to convert the extra energy to mechanical work; meaning that they vibrate inside the crystal, until the bonds between the molecules are broken and start moving freely.

At the same time, energy from the free water molecules is further transferred to the still trapped molecules, triggering a chain melting reaction. The chemist from the Uppsala University stated that the model used to construct the computer simulation was based on data extracted from a previous real life experiment conducted in 2006, in which a block of water ice was melted with the help of a laser system.

Aside explaining a basic phenomena that was previously known, Spoel fails to provide actual details of the results extracted from the simulations, which would have explained what exactly happens on the atomic scale. He argues that the simulations closely follow the time scale of a real substance shifting from a solid to a liquid phase, which could take a little as a fraction of a picosecond. So far, the findings remain only theoretical until technology would be able to provide the tools that would enable a real world experiment.

Spoel also declares that his kids think the work he's doing is rather common sense than actual science, however taking into consideration the multiple anomalies experienced with water, the fact that it is an indispensable liquid to life, and that there existed no previous model of such a process, they couldn't be more wrong.