Melting point of ice at 1 atmosphere of pressure is very close to ; this is also known as the ice point. In the presence of nucleating substances, the freezing point of water is not always the same as the melting point. In the absence of nucleators water can exist as a supercooled liquid down to −48.3 °C (−55 °F, 224.8 K) before freezing. The chemical element with the highest melting point is tungsten, at ; this property makes tungsten excellent for use as filaments in light bulbs. The often-cited carbon does not melt at ambient pressure but sublimes at about ;
Melting point melting points. A high melting point results from a high heat of fusion, a low entropy of fusion, or a combination of both. In highly symmetrical molecules the crystal phase is densely packed with many efficient intermolecular interactions resulting in a higher enthalpy change on melting. An attempt to predict the bulk melting point of crystalline materials was first made in 1910 by Frederick Lindemann. The idea behind the theory was the observation that the average amplitude of thermal vibrations increases with increasing temperature. Melting initiates when the amplitude of vibration becomes large enough for adjacent atoms to partly occupy