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mfb- t1_j6vl68j wrote

Reply to comment by News_of_Entwives in Suppose I have a container of water with a ball floating on top of it. I put it outside overnight and the water freezes. Since the water's volume increases as it freezes, the ball is raised. Where does the increased gravitational potential energy come from? by schematicboy

The ball will raise the water level in the container, which increases the average pressure, so the freezing point decreases by an extremely tiny amount.

We are talking about really small effects here. Freezing one liter of water releases 334,000 J. Raising a 10 gram ball by a centimeter needs 0.001 J.

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