I put them on top of rice for 3 minutes, the rice gets super hot, but the ice cubes are barely affected.
In: Physics
Microwaves heat water inside your food very unevenly. One reason why ice cubes didn’t melt is because they probably absorbed less energy than rice.
Another reason hides in the specific heat capacity of water and the heat of fusion of ice. You need 418,4 Joules of heat to warm up 1g of liquid water from 0°C to 100°C. Meanwhile, it would take 333,55 Joules of heat to melt 1g of ice ( the transition from 0°C solid water to 0°C liquid water). Melting ice and then heating the resulting liquid water takes significantly more energy than just heating liquid water.
So, if you have 1g of 0°C water and 1g of 0°C ice in a microwave and they theoretically absorb an equal amount of energy, water will be already hot while ice will only slightly melt (but still stay at 0°C).
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