I’m not a huge natural science person, but I just wonder what the process of “transferring” temperature is from ice to drinks. And why does it happen fast?
In: Physics
It’s physics.
Two processes are happening:
* Heat goes from high temperature things to lower temperature things, until everything ends up with the same temperature. The heat energy that’s in hot objects basically “spreads around” to the colder objects, until everything has the same temperature.
* Ice stays at 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) until the last bit of ice is melted. The ice absorbs heat from the hot liquid around it, but all that heat energy goes into melting the ice (loosening up the water molecules from the solid chunk of crystal ice to a loose liquid of molecules). The ice absorbs heat but does NOT increase in temperature. The drink loses heat energy and does decrease in temperature.
So that’s how ice cools drinks, the heat energy in the hot liquid goes into the ice and it’s “used” to melt the ice, and while there’s ice left, the temperature of the ice does NOT increase. Thus the temperature of the liquid is forced to decrease so that “everything has the same temperature”, and the liquid will feel cold to you.
The same process, by the way, happens with boiling water. Boiling water does not go above 100 Celsius (212 Fahrenheit) while it boils, the heat coming from the flame is used to boil the water (loosen the molecules to steam form instead of liquid form). This is why the fire that can char a barbecue steak to a burnt crisp does NOT do the same to the same piece of meat if it’s in a soup (in water). The boiling water forces the temperatures to not go over 100 Celsius, thus preventing the burning of the meat.
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