Which is responsible for the high thermal energy required to melt ice?

Answer 1

I'm not sure that I understand your question.

Here's what I think you're asking: Why is the melting point of H2O so high relative to other compounds?

Another possibility is that you are asking about the high specific heat of water.

I'll try to answer both of those questions.

Contrary to popular belief, ice is just not that cold - to a scientist! Water freezes at a relatively high temperature. To understand why is going to take a little background knowledge.

Temperature is the average kinetic energy of a certain conglomerate of molecules. Basically temperature measures how much the molecules of a substance are moving around, relative to one another. The higher temperature, the more those molecules are moving!

All that movement takes energy, and there are lots of factors that determine just how much energy it is going to take to get molecules moving.

It is easiest to talk about these factors (the ones that tell us how much energy it takes to reach a certain temperature) when we consider a pure substance. For right now, we'll talk about pure water -- H2O!

In water, the most important reason that it takes lots of energy to get molecules moving - raising the temperature - is that water molecules are pretty good at sticking to one another.

This is because water molecules are very polar - like a magnet, one side is negatively charged and the other side is positively charged.

This is because of the atoms from which water is made - oxygen is much better at holding tightly to the negatively charged electrons it shares with hydrogen in a water molecule. This causes the hydrogen molecules to have a positive charge and the oxygen molecules to have a negative charge.

When there is more than one molecule of water, the positive end of one molecule sticks strongly to the negative side of another molecule.

All this attraction between the molecules makes it harder for them to move, because you have to break that attraction.

Thus it takes a lot of energy to raise the temperature of water and the temperature of water has to be pretty high (from a scientist's perspective) for it to change from a solid (ice) to a liquid to quench your thirst!

Answer 2

Hydrogen bonding is responsible for the high thermal energy required to melt ice.

Answer 3

Heat is hotness and when ice has hotness in the surroundings, it will changes its temperature to fit in with the room temperatute, therefore ice will change its state

Answer 4

The shape of the water molecule and the ability of the hydrogen atoms within them to flex means that the ice molecules require more energy to change phase to liquid water.

Answer 5

Hydrogen Bonding (: