I saw a video of someone using an ice cube in bubbling fat and the fat stuck to the ice cube. How does the cold fat stick to the ice?
In: 10
First things first, I’d like to say that the description sounds like [one thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsQ4vv8ljQ4), but I think you [meant another](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75CtYoIMuOM). I’d like to strongly recommend not mixing ice and ***bubbling fats,*** unless you know what you’re doing and/or have sufficient safety precautions. The boiling point of oils is much higher than water, which causes flashboiling and potentially explosive steam creation; the second video I linked is at most bubbling ***soup*** which is still primarily water, and thus not bubbling fats.
To steal a turn of phrase from Hank Green, I think it stops becoming chemistry, and starts becoming physics. The reason why liquid fats are hydrophobic is because fats are nonpolar, and water is polar. Polar liquids and nonpolar liquids really don’t want to go into solution together.
But when you have an ice cube, which is far below the solidification temperature of those fats, it’s not so much a chemical “nope,” as it is a physical “yes.” The fats start to solidify, and any nucleation points will be on the ice. The fats stick to themselves, and it appears to me to be incredibly weakly bonded to the ice. It’s also likely melting a bit of the ice every time. Friction may be the only thing holding it on; perhaps van der Waals, but I think a combination of “The fats that stick are the cold ones and the hot ones don’t” and it being held still, with the fact that fats want to float, I could see this being entirely physical in nature, not chemical.
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