For an experiment, put ice in your Election Day drink
Clay is off today. Here’s a column from Nov. 13, 2006:
Today’s question: If I put ice cubes in a glass and then fill it to the brim with water, why doesn’t the water overflow when the ice cubes melt? Hmm, I think maybe somebody has been thinking too much. Or maybe somebody’s getting ready for a science fair project.
Anyway, the answer is fairly simple. That’s good, because if it were really hard I probably wouldn’t do it.
OK, stuff floats if its density is less then the density of water.
And when something floats, the weight of the water it displaces is exactly the same as the thing that’s floating. That’s what Archimedes figured out when yelled “Eureka” and jumped out of his bathtub. Or at least I think it was. Maybe he had figured out something else. I know it had something to do with his bathtub.
But I digress.
If you were to take the ice cubes out of the glass, the water level would drop by an amount equal to the weight of the ice. And when the ice melts back into water it will take up only the space that it displaced when it was an ice cube.
Hence, ergo and Kalamazoo, the glass doesn’t overflow.
When we first moved to Arizona, it was illegal to sell alcohol on Election Day. When did that change? Arizona did indeed for many years bar the sale of spirituous liquors on Election Day.
I guess they worried about unscrupulous candidates buying votes with drinks, a custom not unheard of in the old days. Or maybe they just wanted people to get out and vote and not hang around in bars all day. Or maybe they just wanted them to vote sober.
Whatever the case, the law was repealed in 1993.
Cheers.