Physics: What Makes Ice Melt So Much?

How is ice cream made? Why does the ice melt so much? What energy conversions are used in the making of ice cream? To answer these questions a person must understand that there is much physics behind the process of making ice cream. Not only is it delicious but holds the secret to understanding many chemical and physical processes in science. To begin, why does ice melt so much in the bag? This occurs because the ice gets heated, but where does it get heat from? The heat come from the phase changes. The ice which is going from solid to liquid, is absorbing the heat energy from the other ingredients/ice cream. In addition, the ice is sprinkled with rock salt, which lowers the freezing point of the ice. The freezing point being when a substance becomes solid. When the ice melts, even more heat is absorbed from the the ice cream mixture. All of the heat that the ice absorbs makes the ice melt, lowering the freezing point;meanwhile, the ice cream mixture is changing from a liquid phase to the more solid form, ice cream.

In this case, the ice is absorbing the heat from both the environment and the ice cream mixture. An example of an exothermic reaction would be the ice cream forming into a solid because freezing is taking away all of the heat and freezing it. To explain that all the energy is not lost when the ice absorbs the heat, there is the Law of Conservation of Energy. The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Hence stating that when the ice absorbs heat from the ice cream mixture all the energy from the transfer of heat energy is not lost, for the ice is melting. In fact, the reason the ice cream forms is because the ice absorbs most of the heat from the mixture; otherwise, the ice would not be cold enough to freeze the