By Bapt82 - 07/08/2016 14:35 - Switzerland - Luzern

Today, my sixteen-year-old daughter put her soda in the microwave to “cool it down by making the ice cubes melt faster”. FML
I agree, your life sucks 894
You deserved it 102

Top comments

If you place a closed, room temperature soda can in icy water and add salt, the salt causes the ice to melt rapidly resulting in a quickly cooled beverage in about 60 seconds. This is such a cool little trick to know :D

Comments

If you place a closed, room temperature soda can in icy water and add salt, the salt causes the ice to melt rapidly resulting in a quickly cooled beverage in about 60 seconds. This is such a cool little trick to know :D

DeMamp 15

Does it work with beer? asking for a friend...

Would that not make your drink salty?

#33 Not unless osmosis suddenly affects sealed tin cans.

tantanpanda 26

#33, the original comment says that the can is closed, meaning you're not putting the salt in the soda. You're essentially making a colder than normal ice bath for your drink so it will cool faster. This is an example of colligative properties. Same thing with adding salt to pasta; the water will boil at a higher temperature. Likewise, solvent with solute will depress the freezing point. If that didn't make sense, you're basically throwing salt in a bucket of ice water. The ice will gain heat to convert into water and the heat comes from the water environment, which is why the water gets colder. Colder water = colder drink.

Adding salt to the water your cooking pasta in does not noticeably raise the boiling point unless your adding more salt than the same amount of ocean water has in it and at that point your pasta would taste like garbage. The reason you add salt to pasta water is to give the pasta some salt so it tastes better

I sure hope she has a better grasp of birth control than she does of physics.

My momma always said stupid is as stupid does.

I believe the correct question to ask would be "Are you the Waterboy?".

At least it wasn't metal, unless it was in a can, in which case, you need to have another kid to make up for her.

Took me a while to grasp what her plan was.

she's not wrong, in theory, the faster ice melts the more energy it saps from the surrounding liquid. the microwave however won't help.

tantanpanda 26

No, it's still false in theory too. If it's ice water, the water and ice are at thermal equilibrium (both at 0°C), assuming you are using a lot of ice and you're trying to make your drink colder, which is what it sounds like in the OP's story. The melting ice would not make the drink colder because, in theory, they are both at the same temperature. If the water loses heat to the environment, the water will be above 0°C, which would be providing energy for the ice to melt. The system would still be at 0°, especially if no heat is lost to the surrounding (since you're saying in theory)