Bursting Money Bins, the ice and water structure

TL;DR

This paper explores the physical reasons behind water's expansion upon freezing and proposes simple illustrative methods to demonstrate this phenomenon clearly.

Contribution

It provides a straightforward explanation of water's anomalous expansion and introduces accessible ways to visualize this behavior for educational purposes.

Findings

Water expands when freezing due to molecular structure changes.

Simple demonstrations can effectively illustrate water's expansion.

Understanding this phenomenon aids in educational and scientific contexts.

Abstract

That water expands when freezing is a well-known fact, and it is at the basis of an experiment that is often involuntary performed with beer bottles in freezers. But why does the water behave this way? And, more difficult, how can one illustrate this phenomenon in simple terms?