if we think of heat as energy, what do we consider something like simple ice cubes?

Question

So we consider heat to be energy. But what is the reaction of putting ice cubes into a drink? Is this not energy too?

In: 0

Answer 1

There are two kinds of energy, potential energy and kinetic energy. Potential energy isn’t a part of this story.

In this case, we’re dealing with kinetic energy which means movement. Even though a glass of water may look very still, at the tiniest level, the particles are bouncing around. The more they’re moving the warmer the water is.

So your glass of water has a certain amount of energy in the movement of those water molecules.

The molecules in ice are moving a lot less. It has a lot less energy than the water.

When you drop in the ice cube, some of the energy from the glass of water flows to the water molecules in the ice, making them move a little bit more. But in giving up that energy, the molecules from the surrounding water move a little slower. The molecules in the ice start moving enough that they’re now water. the flow of energy from the warmer water of the original water, to the colder water of the melted ice keeps going until all the water in the cup is more or less the same temperature.

Technically, you DID add energy because ice doesn’t have zero energy, but the cooling down happened because you introduced something that had less energy.

Imagine a sink full of rubber balls all bouncing around fast that’s the glass of water. Put in a few balls that are barely moving that’s your ice. The fast moving balls will hit the slower ones and transfer some of their energy. They’ll ricochet back a little slower and the slow ones will start moving faster. This is more or less what’s happening in the molecules of an ice cube placed in a room temp glass of water.