Hey there!
We have the three states of matter, labelled in the picture, called gases, liquids, and solids.
But did you know that there are terms and explanations as to how a material's state can change?
Gases changing into a liquid is called condensation. This occurs when warm air collides with cold surfaces, making the cold surface 'sweat' from the warm air. We see this in the early mornings when the sun starts cooling up the grass, which was colder because of the night.
Liquids changing into a gas is called vaporization. This occurs when liquids are usually approached to a high enough temperature in which it exceeds their boiling point, and the tighter liquid molecules drift off wandering around. When molecules wander around enough, they can vaporize and turn into a gas.
Liquids turning into a solid is called freezing. This happens because in colder temperatures, molecules cannot move as quick because they are mimicking their environment; they actually clump up together because they are cold (think about it as them warming themselves up with each molecules around them!) and become a solid.
Solids turning to a liquid is called melting. When something at it's freezing point (when it is a solid) and it loses that freezing point and gets warmer, the molecules can now move around much more freely, which means that it can become a liquid.
Solids turning into a gas is called sublimination. Think of the snow droplets turning into water vapor immediately in the air. This is an example of sublimination, where a good amount of heat is given and skips the liquid phase.
Gas turning into a solid is called deposition. We already thought about the snow; so let's think of the water vapor turning into snow in the air, the opposite reaction; this is due to the excessively extreme cold air that was given to the water vapor that made it skip the liquid phase.
In this problem, we see that a block of ice is turning into water.
We can conclude that it is turning from a solid to liquid.
However, why does this occur? Like we learned before, this process is called melting; and this occurs when something that was colder than water's freezing point (32°F or 0°C) is applied warmth (which is energy) from the air to the ice, the ice will melt into a liquid. The molecules are no longer constricted to this firm slow movement and can freely move around.
Therefore,
1. The ice will melt because the air is too warm to sustain the ice's climate.
2. This happens because since the climate is presumed to be above the water's freezing point, the ice will no longer be able to maintain it's phase.
3. The ice left out would be a phase change of solid to liquid.
4. This phenomenon is called melting.