> Bill,
>
>
> Water is one of the few substances that expands when going through a phase
> transformation from liquid to solid. That's why ice floats and aquatic life
> is possible in temperate climates. An old trick is to "melt" a wire through
> a block of ice by hanging weights from the wire. But you probably know all
> that.
As far as I can recall, liquid plutonium is another substance that
expands when it freezes (solidifies). This is complicated by the
fact that there are I think 6 allotropic phases of the solid metal,
plus the liquid and the vapour phases. I've got the thermodynamic
data on it somewhere, not that this has any relevance to the topic.
> Is it possible that the same principle caused the planes to sink deeper
into
> the ice? I don't know if the pressure of the planes was sufficiently high
> to cause melting of the ice under the planes but there was lots of time.
>
>
> Chuck Vandergraaf
> Pinawa, MB
Christopher M. Sharp
http://www.csharp.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 16 2001 - 01:19:03 EST