> There's a lot fewer ways to arrange water molecules so that they form an ice cube than there are to arrange them as a liquid. Most arrangements of water molecules look like a liquid, and so that's the likely endpoint even if they start arranged as an ice cube.
Except this is, as an insight, obviously wrong. The arrangement you get is determined by temperature: cold water will spontaneously freeze, and hot ice will spontaneously melt. The model you state predicts that
In keeping with the level of explanation in the article, I was omitting the role of energy in describing the exploration of possible microstates by the system.
A system with zero energy is highly constrained in its exploration of possible microstates, and thus is unlikely to undergo a change in its macrostate.
A system with a lot of energy is much less constrained, and is more likely to undergo macrostate changes.
This wasn't really covered in the article, so I didn't want to put it into my (perhaps foolish) add on sentences.
This followup still predicts that cooling water cannot cause it to freeze. (And relatedly, it predicts that cold ice will take a long time to melt, but not that it won't melt. In fact, it won't melt.)
I don't see why either of those things follow, particulary the second.
Cold ice, in an environment that doesn't supply energy to the ice, will not explore microstates at any notable pace, and thus will not melt.
I don't think it makes any prediction about what will happen when cooling water, because the freezing reaction is related to the specific chemistry of water molecules. The only prediction is that any macrostate that gets newly entered into is less likely to change, because of the relatively low energy state of the system (compared to the energy required to break the newly formed bonds of the crystalline form.
1. Things tend to turn to dust rather than stay together, because the number of states where things are "together" are small, and the number of states where things are dust are high.
2. Ice has a few arrangements, and water has many. So water is "dust ice".
3. H2O will naturally tend towards "dust" form over time, so ice will eventually become water.
Except this is, as an insight, obviously wrong. The arrangement you get is determined by temperature: cold water will spontaneously freeze, and hot ice will spontaneously melt. The model you state predicts that
- Hot ice will spontaneously melt (correct)
- Cold ice will spontaneously melt (nope)
- Cold water will not spontaneously freeze (nope)