A student asked me this today. I understand that salt doesn’t actually melt ice, but lowers its melting temp, but how do I explain this to a child?
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They work the same way, we just use different parts of the reaction.
Salt will lower the freezing point of water, causing the ice to melt.
When making ice cream, we do the same thing because when ice melts, it has to absorb a certain amount of heat (latent heat of fusion). It does this by taking heat from its surroundings, cooling it off. The salt just triggers that melting of the ice.
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