You have a drink that you want to cool off? You could put in 100 g of ice or 100 g of water, both at 0 degree C. Which one would be more effective in cooling your drink? Why?
What do you think? You must remove 80 calories per gram of ice before it rises above 0 C. This helps cool drinks more, and stay cold for a longer period of time.
To determine which one, ice or water, would be more effective in cooling off your drink, we need to consider the concept of specific heat.
Specific heat is the amount of heat energy required to raise the temperature of a substance by a certain amount. Water has a higher specific heat than ice, which means it can absorb more heat energy for a given temperature change.
In this scenario, both the ice and water are at 0 degrees Celsius (or 32 degrees Fahrenheit), so the initial temperatures are the same. Let's assume your drink is also at 0 degrees Celsius.
When you add the ice to the drink, it starts to melt. During the melting process, energy from the drink is transferred to the ice to break the intermolecular bonds and convert the ice into water. This energy transfer lowers the temperature of the drink, thus cooling it.
Similarly, when you add water at 0 degrees Celsius to the drink, some of the water molecules may lose heat energy and undergo a phase change from liquid to solid, forming ice. Again, this energy transfer cools down the drink.
However, since water has a higher specific heat than ice, it can absorb more heat energy from the drink during the phase change. This means that water would be more effective in cooling your drink compared to an equal mass of ice.
Therefore, to cool off your drink more effectively, it is better to put 100 g of water at 0 degrees Celsius rather than 100 g of ice.