A skinny water bottle left in the freezer got fat overnight. Why did that happen?
In WAGZAK JUMP, Didi discovers the three states of water (ice, liquid, and vapor) and the secret behind why things expand when they freeze.
Join Didi on a journey to follow the water’s cycle as it swirls from the ocean to the clouds, to rain, and to rivers.
Why did the once-slender water bottle get so fat?
I froze the water, so why did it get chubby?
Last night, I put the half-empty plastic bottle in the freezer. When I opened the door this morning to take it out, my water bottle had gotten fat. What’s going on?! Why is this happening?!
It was definitely skinny when I put it in yesterday, but when I woke up, it was bulging out like it had a potbelly. When I touched it, it was packed full of ice and wouldn’t budge an inch.
I thought maybe my farts were playing tricks on me. But even my farts said they didn’t know. Grandma told me, “Try to figure out why that happened,” and went off to make soup. But no matter how hard I thought about it, I couldn’t figure it out. I checked WAGZAK JUMP to see if there was anything there, and there it was: “The Secret of the Shape-Shifting Water.” Eek, that’s it!
Rain turned into snow right in the middle of my room
Whoa! A little island was floating right in the middle of my room. Popo and his friends were standing on the grass, and rain was pouring down from the sky. Right inside my room!!
“What’s the difference between rain and snow?”
Poppo raised his hand and lowered the temperature. Then, the rain whooshed and turned into snow. The grass turned white, and the pond froze solid. Apparently, this is the first secret of water.
Water is a master of transformation. It changes into three forms: ice, water, and steam.
Ice becomes water, and water becomes steam
I kept watching because I was so curious, and there was ice floating, a cup of water floating next to it, and even a kettle with white steam rising from it. All three are water. They’re the same water, just at different temperatures.
Purum put the ice in a beaker and started heating it slowly. When it reached 0 degrees, the ice melted smoothly into water, and when it reached 100 degrees, it started bubbling and white steam began rising. Hehe, it’s just like the kettle at our house!
Solid → Liquid → Gas
When ice melts into water, it’s called “melting,” and when water boils into steam, it’s called “vaporization.” When steam cools down and turns back into water, it’s called “condensation.” The names sound complicated, but the app shows each tiny water droplet, so I understood it right away.
This really surprised me. The water droplets inside the ice are holding hands and building a hexagonal house. Apparently, that house takes up more space than when it was just water. So, when water turns into ice, it actually gets bigger. When it melts back into water, they let go and clump together, and when it boils into steam, they scatter in all directions—poof!
You cut through a rock with water?
But this is where I was really surprised.
They showed me a huge rock and said you can cut stone with ice!!
"People in the old days cut rocks with water."
A rock?! A boulder?! Just with water?!
Popo drilled a hole in the rock and poured water inside. Then, after waiting and waiting, the water froze and the rock split right open! Ice is stronger than rock. Wow, even water—which is supposed to be weak—became stronger.
Yikes! So that’s why my water bottle got so fat!!
When water turns to ice, it expands, so even inside a tightly sealed bottle, it pushes its way out. If it could split a rock like that, my plastic bottle would have been a piece of cake. It wasn’t that the bottle got fat; it was the ice pushing against the inside of the bottle.
They say water goes on a whirlwind journey
This time, the mountains, the sea, and even the clouds all came into my room. When the sun rose, the seawater swished up into the air and turned into clouds. Those clouds drifted toward the mountains, and as they cooled, they fell as raindrops.
