Monday, April 14, 2008

Scientific Displacement

I was thirsty today after a dry lunch. So I headed to the drinks stall to get myself something nice. I half filled my cup with ice and filled the rest with my drink, paid the lady and walked on. I usually don't take ice coz the drink is cold enough when the machine dispenses it and ice just occupies space for no reason. But today I felt like taking ice and I did. I looked at it and immediately blushed away to glory... thinking of something that happened last night...

The night before

I was just surfing the net and aimlessly hopping from site to site. Mostly comics stuff. Then I came across this site which has a bunch of comic strips. One of them had the following conversation between the characters. (This is just a part of the comic strip). And its rather sad that instead of laughing, I learnt something from it :">

She: Dude. I loaded this glass with ice cubes, an now they are melted, but they didn't spill over the side. What's up with that?!
He: What is up with what?
She: Why didn't the melted ice cubes overflow the glass?
He: You can't be serious
She: What? There's a lot of ice in here!
He: It's called displacement. Look it up in a high school text book sometime.
(after reading)
Me: Oooooooh! I didn't know that! Cool!

Yes.... I am a science major... why do you ask :">

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There will come a time in the life of all of us to shout "EUREKA" atleast once!!! It happened to you yesterday, last night? That is "cool". Just imagine if all of the protein in our body unfolds/and "dehelicifies" (Hey that is a cool word), what would happen to our body. Would it bulge out in all directions? Think about it and shout "EUREKA" when you find an answer.

Anusha said...

Huh. I don't think I thought about it in "displacement" terms, just that ice doesn't overflow when it melts into water because there are gaps that the liquid fills up. Is that what displacement is? I should go look it up too :/

But ha! I make the cabbage/lettuce mistake myself quite often. :">

soleil said...

Water expands when it forms ice so when it melts, it takes up less space. Is this the displacement the dude was talking about? That the ice displaces the liquid water, so when it melts back to liquid, it just occupies (a little less of) the space that it had initially taken up?