Amazing properties of water

• Ice is less dense than water. This pretty much means it will float on water and freeze from top to bottom. If ice was not less dense than water fishes and other pond life would be greatly affected if ice froze from the bottom upwards.
• Water has a specific heat capacity. Meaning it takes a lot of energy to make water a little warmer This is why on a hot day the sand on a beach can be too hot to walk on but the sea still feels cool the energy from the sun is enough to heat the sand a lot but the water only a little. This has some very important implications, especially for organisms that live in water. Seas, lakes and rivers maintain a much more constant temperature than air which means that animals can live in water all year round without having to adapt to large temperature changes.
• Capillary action. If you put a very fine tube into a beaker of water you will see that some of the water travels a short way up the tube this is caused by water molecules clinging to the sides of the tube and other molecules of water with it.Eventually the weight of the water being pulled is too great to be supported and the water stops moving, having reached an equilibrium. This same principle allows plants to draw water up from the ground. As water molecules travel up the stem more water molecules stick to them and more stick to those and so on until a column of water is being transported in the xylem.