• Question: Is ice ice if it doesn’t have water?

    Asked by bellk19 to Simon on 11 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Simon Brown

      Simon Brown answered on 11 Nov 2019:

      Ask someone what is ice and they will usually say it is frozen water. But dry ice is cooled carbon dioxide, down to -78C, where it becomes a solid. Sublimation is when a substance goes from a solid to gas without becoming a liquid (and visa-versa) and carbon dioxide does this. It can either be a solid or gas so if dry ice ‘melts’ (warms up), it just becomes CO2 gas and isn’t ‘wet’ like water.

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