Question: Why do solids have a larger volume than liquids and why? If the answer is due to the fact that there is more space between the particles in a solid then is it posible to compress a solid's volume down to the volume of a liquid?

Scott Lawrie answered on 8 Mar 2016:

In general, gases have the largest volume, then liquids, and solids are the smallest. But you may be thinking about ice. Ice is a very strange solid which is actually less dense (so takes up a bigger volume) than water! That’s why icebergs float on the sea, rather than sinking to the bottom. It’s also why a full bottle of water put into the freezer will puff out and sometimes burst because the frozen ice takes up more space than the water, so the bottle breaks!

The reason this happens is because water molecules are like little V shapes which when liquid can fit inside each other like this: <<<<<<

When it gets cold enough to make ice, though, the water molecules try to make a nice sensible crystal pattern, making little hexagons (which is why snowflakes have six sides!). This means the V-shapes need to move apart and turn around a bit to make the hexagons: they take up more space than the liquid V-shapes nuzzling into each other.

I hope that explains it. To summarise, solids USUALLY take up a smaller volume than liquids, but water-ice is weird!