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210
The Fairy-Land of Science
·
Arabella B. Buckley
81
But
how
about
ice?
Here,
you
will
say,
is
frozen
water,
and
yet
we
see
no
crystals,
only
a
clear
transparent
mass.
Here,
again,
Dr.
Tyndall
helps
us.
He
says
(and
as
I
have
proved
it
true,
so
may
you
for
yourselves,
if
you
will)
that
if
you
take
a
magnifying
glass,
and
look
down
on
the
surface
of
ice
on
a
sunny
day,
you
will
see
a
number
of
dark,
six-sided
stars,
looking
like
flattened
flowers,
and
in
the
centre
of
each
a
bright
spot.
These
flowers,
which
are
seen
when
the
ice
is
melting,
are
our
old
friends
the
crystal
stars
turning
into
water,
and
the
bright
spot
in
the
middle
is
a
bubble
of
empty
space,
left
because
the
watery
flower
does
not
fill
up
as
much
room
as
the
ice
of
the
crystal
star
did.
And
this
leads
us
to
notice
that
ice
always
takes
up
more
room
than
water,
and
that
this
is
the
reason
why
our
water-pipes
burst
in
severe
frosts;
for
as
the
water
freezes
it
expands
with
great
force,
and
the
pipe
is
cracked,
and
then
when
the
thaw
comes
on
,
and
the
water
melts
again,
it
pours
through
the
crack
it
has
made.
It
is
not
difficult
to
understand
why
ice
should
take
more
room;
for
we
know
that
if
we
were
to
try
to
arrange
bricks
end
to
end
in
star-like
shapes,
we
must
leave
some
spaces
between,
and
could
not
pack
them
so
closely
as
if
they
lay
side
by
side.
And
so,
when
this
giant
force
of
crystallization
constrains
the
atoms
of
frozen
water
to
grow
into
star-like
forms,
the
solid
mass
must
fill
more
room
than
the
liquid
water,
and
when
the
star
melts,
this
space
reveals
itself
to
us
in
the
bright
spot
of
the
centre.
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