How do you keep a ice cube from melting without a cooler? we can't buy stuff from the store.its a science pjct

Answer 1

Its difficult to figure out exactly what you are trying to do. Your science project is a clue that your teacher is giving you a challenge to come up with a way to preserve an ice cube without a cooler or store-bought materials. If that is the case, some of the methods already suggested will help, but here's some more ideas.

An ice cube (water below 0°C) melts into water when the temperature is above 0°C. So if my assumption of your question is correct, you will need to figure out a way to (1) keep the ice in an atmosphere or other ambient conditions below 0°C or (2) prevent the ice from contacting any mass above 0°C.

1. The insulation as suggested by the previous answerers will help delay the ice melting, but it won't prevent it. If you lived in the Arctic, or any place that the temperature is less than 0°C, you can be reasonably assured that your ice cube won't melt without a cooler. It will however eventually disappear due to sublimation and evaporation.

2. Putting the ice cube in a vacuum will permanently preserve it, as there will be no mass (such as air) to transfer heat to/from the ice cube, and also it can not evaporate into a vacuum.

Hope that gives you some ideas....

By the way, putting the ice cube in a cold stream as suggested by a previous answer won't work. Moving water, even if its very cold, has a much higher heat transfer rate than air so your ice cube will melt very quickly.

Answer 2

FIRST YOU HAVE TO PUT AN ICE CUBE IN AN CONTAINER THEN WRAP THE INSIDE OUT WITH SOME ALUMINIUM FOIL THEN KEEP CHECKING EVRY HALF HOUR UNTIL IT MELTS EACH LAYER OF FOIL INCREASES THE TIME I TAKES TO MELT KEEP RECORDING THE TIME IT TAKES AS YOU MIGHT NEED IT FOR YOUR SCIENCE FAIR PROJECT

Answer 3

RE:
How do you keep a ice cube from melting without a cooler? we can't buy stuff from the store.its a science pjct

Answer 4

Use styrofoam as an insulation due to the fact that it is not a conductor of heat
Towels, bubble wrap and newspaper will aslo provide insulation. Sand does the same.
Using Aluminium foil uses it's shiny surface to reflect radiation
Using a wet cloth will keep it cold
Make the ice from boiled water.
Using a vaccum on the ice will keep the ice from having air
Try to make your container light coloured but not metallic

Answer 5

if you stick the ice cube in a container and place aluminum foil around the inside of it the reflective surface will keep the container cooler then place a lid or something to cover the top of the container to keep out warm air from the atmosphere i hope this helps for anyone reading this right now

Answer 6

perform the experiment outside, in Minneapolis, in January. You shouldn't have any problems keeping the ice from melting.

Answer 7

This will not work well but it is how it was done 100 years ago.
1.dig a hole in the ground over 3 feet the temp ofthe earth 68 in the summer.
2 Place in a mountion streem the water very cold.
3 it is winter just keep it out side.

Answer 8

This is tough. Before refrigeration, ice would be transported from the mountains or frozen lakes by wrapping it in saw dust and layers and layers of fabric. The fabric was kept damp, and air blowing across the wet fabric kept the ice more or less intact. (Oddly enough, if you put the package IN water, the heat from even cold water is warmer than the ice and the ice will melt.)

Answer 9

i really like the huge ice cube idea but the wet cloth cloth idea has some thoery you could use to help develop an experiment.

It's called "evaporative cooling". when water evaporates, as in the wet cloth, it cools. the theory is very simple, as the water evaporates, water molecules, containing a certain amount of energy, are escaping. now the water has less amounts of energy and so the temperature goes down. the more molecules that escape, the more it cools.

sweating is a form of evaporative cooling. also many ac systems use "cooling towers" that use evaporative cooling to cool water.

i think its a great idea.

Answer 10

Start with a big enough ice cube to have something left when you need it.