My water conundrum

[DarbyII]

To add more clutter to my scrambled cranium, which has more "weight"? Equal amounts of ie: 1 gal of water, or 1 gal of ice? Currently waiting for test results.

Peterle was correct.

Your conundrum is over one of those special properties of water - the phase change as it goes from a liquid to ice - a crystal. Liquid water's molecules fit a lot closer together than when they line up neatly and form a crystal in the phase change to ice. By lining up in a lattice they have a much stronger molecular bonding even though the molecules are farther apart. Farther apart the density decreases. Ice, though "stronger" than liquid water, is less dense than liquid water.

BTW: When water goes from a liquid to steam that is also a phase change, even though I said that it was in principle the same thing in an earlier post. The molecular bonds are completely broken. But it isn't as dramatic a phase change as going from a liquid to a crystal.

[Luke]

Again I am showing my ignorance, but when atoms are split there seems to be a massive release of energy, what I am thinking of is a way to harness the "slow" energy it takes to move protons and electrons away from the nucleus. Not split the atom, more like ride the movement.

[American Patriot]

Luke....

There is a difference in "molecular bonding" and "nuclear bonding".

It TAKES energy to split an atom... as in, say nuclear bombs. So, yes, if you force this to occur you do create energy too. But it takes energy to make a nuclear bomb go off.

On the other hand a "critical mass" of nuclear material (uranium, plutonium, etc) will spontaneously blow up if you put enough together because of neutron bleed.

It TAKES energy to cause a molecular bonding to break. Heating water up into steam. Heating ice up into water. Those require energy - and don't produce energy.

So... you're talking two different things here.

You can create hydrogen gas and oxygen gas out of water very easily. But again, it takes energy to get it out. Recombination of the two gases requires introduction of energy (say, a flame) and will indeed produce an explosion but likely will not be MORE energy than was used to break it apart in the first place.

Does that help?

[Luke]

dammit it is just like the old Poco song states, "All the things I want to take, cost so much more than I make"

I have been thinking that the different states of H2O could be used to create energy, but alas and alack, it takes more energy than it makes for this to ever work, so far...