Hm, that's an interesting thought. If I've googled correctly, water at 0c is about the same density as water at 8c. So if your initial water is cooler than that, it ought to sink below the freezing temp water at the bottom.
Unless the top is warmed by the air faster than the bottom is cooled by the ice (I suppose not -- surely heat is sucked into ice faster than into water from the air? But I don't know).
That's be as interesting thing to test, actually. My intuition is that the heat is conducted fairly evenly throughout. But if not, and you have enough ice throughout, might there be two stable states, one 0c throughout and one 0c at the bottom and >8c at the top? If so, might there be a cut-off in original uniform temperature that leads to one or the other? If so, that would be really interesting.
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Date: 2008-02-16 02:05 pm (UTC)Unless the top is warmed by the air faster than the bottom is cooled by the ice (I suppose not -- surely heat is sucked into ice faster than into water from the air? But I don't know).
That's be as interesting thing to test, actually. My intuition is that the heat is conducted fairly evenly throughout. But if not, and you have enough ice throughout, might there be two stable states, one 0c throughout and one 0c at the bottom and >8c at the top? If so, might there be a cut-off in original uniform temperature that leads to one or the other? If so, that would be really interesting.