Recipient on fire?

Question

You have a container full of ice blocks in the fire, and before the ice blocks melt completely, you get the container out of the fire. Would you grab the recipient with your hands? Yes/No, why? I need well-founded physics-related answers.

I would do it.

Answer 1

I would be careful.

First, you need to look at the conductivity across the container. You want something fairly conductive like aluminum so that it would not heat up and simply transfer heat.

Second, and troubling. Blocks of ice have poor contact with the surface of the container. They only transfer heat via conduction over limited points (surface area). So I'd say that the container would probably be about as hot as the fire on the outside which has both radiation and convection of the fire heating the surface and very little cooling from the ice. (Note: I'd wait for the ice to melts sufficiently to form an ice slush mixture. This would cool off the inside of the container and it would be safest to grab.)