Water is one of the most amazing things about Earth. One of the unique facts about water on our planet is that it exists in three very different forms (or states of matter as they are known): solid, liquid and gas.
Most substances expand when heated and contract when cooled. Not so with water. When water is frozen it expands.
Water expands when Frozen
In layman’s terms, things get bigger when they are hotter and shrink when they cool. But water differs in this and is therefore quite unique. Why? It does this amazing thing called the anomalous expansion of water. This is how it works…
When you cool water down in temperature, the water molecules will start moving closer and locking together. At 4ºC the molecules are about as tightly packed as they can get and the water has reached its maximum density.
If you continue cooling it down, the molecules will organise themselves into a slightly more open structure that maintains its strength. When water is frozen, its volume increases by about 9%.
This ice is a less dense structure and that is why it can float on water that is the same temperature. During freezing, water molecules lose energy and do not move around as actively. This allows more stable hydrogen-bonds to form between water molecules, as there is less energy to break the bonds.
This is a fairly special factor which makes the water quite unusual.
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Source: Explainthatstuff, Wikibooks.