Edit: Thanks for the awards! First time i’ve ever received any at all!
In: Chemistry
I learned how hard it is to melt snow/ice with fire in an interesting way. My boss told me to we had a “parade” of higher ups coming through. There was a bunch of dirty snow in the parking lot. I went to Home Depot and rented the biggest kerosene heater I could. Had guys pack it up high and pointed it right at the base. Maybe an hour later very little progress.
One of the guys who reported up through me walked by, called me a dumb fuck and said that’s going to take forever. It was 60 degrees out and he grabbed 2 guys and they broke it up and threw it in a thin layer over the parking lot. Took like 2 hours to melt on its own after that. It would have taken us a day to melt it all.
Anyway, getting schooled by a technician was fun. Little did he know I just wanted to play with a kerosene heater. But, he did get to call me dumb which was a positive for him and taught me a lesson on how many BTU’s it takes to phase change ice to water.
Igloos often have a small hole in the side and one on top. The side hole allows fresh air while the top hole allows CO and smoke to leave. Much of the heat also leaves through that hole.
Snow with an ice layer over it is very insulative. That keeps the heat inside and the cold out. It also keeps the heat out of the actual snow and the ice sort of keeps itself cool. It is the same reason that snow that has a crust of ice takes so long to melt even if it is way above freezing.
What happens is the rough inside later of the igloo melts a little bit at first but the super cold ice behind it which is being kept cold by the outside temperatures freezes it again in to a smooth crust. Because there’s now less surface area the warm inside air is less effective at melting the surrounding ice.
So basically it’s a constant battle between the fire inside warming up the air and the ice and cold air keeping the structure frozen, and the achieve a balance at some point.
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