What happens to the volume of water as it freezes?

Freezing water causes the volume to expand. Putting 9 milliliters of water through the freezing process leads to a volume of approximately 9.1 milliliters of ice. This is not a huge expansion, but it is significant enough to cause some containers to burst under the strain of the expansion.

Adding different substances to water alters its freezing point but does not always influence the change in volume. Salt water expels salt as it freezes, which is why the ice that forms in the oceans at the Earth's polar regions does not taste salty. The presence of sugars and acids has various effects on the change in volume at freezing, depending on the substance.