Which would cook your drink faster… Less pellet ice because it has greater surface area to cool the liquid or more block ice because it has less surface area? Or neither?

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Edit: “cool”

In: Physics

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

What cools the drink is not that the ice is 0°C, but that ice melts. Put the equivalent of two ice cubes at a little above 0°C, mix them with a glass of hot juice, and you’ll still have hot juice.

Put the same amount of frozen water (so, a bit under 0°C), and now the juice will cool. Because it takes a huge amount of energy (think temperature in your case) to have a phase transition.
So, if you are to put the same amount of ice in your glass, if you want to cool it faster, use small pellets. Because there is a greater surface of contact between the ice and the liquid, and so the ice can “extract” the energy (temperature) – and thus melts – from the liquid faster.

But you don’t want to know how to put the same amount of ice, you give us the choice between less pellet ice or more block ice. Then, it depends. If you have enough pellet ice to cool the glass down( and you need to do the maths here), go for it. If you don’t have enough, you’ll go for the block ice.

Anonymous 0 Comments

More surface area means more area for temperature exchange. Using this logic, pellet ice will cool faster, however due to the increased surface area, will also melt faster.