An interesting fact about water

"labeled for reuse" https://static.pexels.com/photos/67843/splashing-splash-aqua-water-67843.jpeg 

In this day and age the new is dominated by the impending doom of climate change. More recently, the news has focused on Donald Trump's insistence that it doesn't exist- but don't get me started about that (that's a post for another day).

What I want to talk about today, is rising sea levels. Now anyone who knows anything about climate change is aware that rising sea levels is one of the primary concerns- and for good reason. With entire countries under threat from total submersion, it's certain no minor consideration.

Now my question to you, is what do you think will ultimately cause this rise in sea level (it's actually already rising). You're probably thinking I've gone a bit looney over my extended leave from blogging, but I promise you I haven't (at least not in this regard). Now the logical answer is the melting of the polar ice caps. And although this isn't wrong, it also isn't the whole truth. The increased volume in water alone will not cause a significant rise in sea level, au contraire, it's down to the chemistry of water. Well, in truth, the laws of chemistry (as this particular property applies to all substances that I'm aware of). When a substance is heated it expands, this is because as temperature rises, particles within a substance receive more energy, and with this energy they are able to travel faster, collide more, and generally expand in volume (provided they are not confined in a fixed volume--> would eventually lead to an explosion of sorts if too much heat is applied to a closed system). Thus, the melting ice caps, ultimately lead to a rise in sea level as there is a greater volume of water that can expand. Which again, will expand because of global warming.

I myself didn't really think about this factoid until quite recently, and I thought it was pretty interesting. Funny how we just let our brains logic themselves into an explanation, without really thinking about how accurate those conclusions really are.