There was only minor damage. But a bizarre six-car pileup on the Kansas University campus Thursday morning illustrated crucial facts about nature, physics and limited university parking.

Six students who parked in an icy, sideways-sloping Lot 100 near 14th and Ohio streets awoke Thursday on the first day of classes to find their cars sandwiched together, side panel to side panel. Apparently, the cars had gradually slipped together during the night while unattended in the wet, near-freezing temperatures.

“I parked here last night because it was the only spot left,” Battenfeld Scholarship Hall resident Weston Vice said while surveying the damage to his 1985 BMW, which was stuck between a Ford Explorer and a Plymouth Neon.

Mary Olson, office manager for the KU parking department, said the area had been cleared of ice previously, but water had been flowing downhill from an unknown source and accumulating in a shady corner of the lot.

Olson said she’d been wondering all day how cars that appeared to be stable could end up gradually sliding sideways downhill.

The same mishap probably wouldn’t have happened had the temperature been much lower, physics professor Adrian Melott said. But when water is near its freezing point, as it was Wednesday night with a low temperature around 31 degrees, it melts and contracts easily with pressure, Melott said.

Most liquids would behave differently in that situation because most liquids contract instead of expanding when they freeze. But water expands and becomes less dense — that is, until someone parks on it and creates a slick layer of water on top.

Jacob Simanowitz waits for police to arrive at a parking lot near 14th and Ohio streets where six vehicles parked on a sheet of ice slid into each other overnight. Simanowitz, a Kansas University freshman from Leavenworth, drives the Ford Explorer, pictured at right.

“Probably what happened to these cars is it was right near freezing and the pressure of the tires melted the ice and acted as a lubricant,” Melott said.

The same property the ice showed in the parking lot also enables it to float in water, and it’s a good thing, too.

“If ice didn’t float, oceans would freeze from the bottom up,” Melott said. “Every winter a little more ice would be added until the oceans froze solid. Earth would be like an ice ball.”

6News video: Students wake up to six-car pileup (01-20-05)

The department barricaded the area and has allowed displaced students to park temporarily in the Kansas Union garage. The department also paid for students to have their cars towed, Olson said.