Mythbusters 7x02 "Alaska Special 2" - Discuss and Grade
- Thread starter Hermiod
- Start date
Doh, sorry, I mixed up what you were saying. I don't think there's anything you can add to water to make it stay frozen at a higher temperature.
^Basically, anything you add to water will lower its melting/freezing point rather than raise it. Any impurities will get in the way of the bonds between water molecules, making it harder to form ice crystals and easier to unform them. So the only thing you can do to water to maximize its melting/freezing point is to purify it as much as possible. Either that or increase its pressure. The freezing point will rise under higher pressure.
I'm aware of all of that, and even if I wasn't I watched the episode where Adam and Jamie find the best way to make a beer cold.
^^^
Didn't see that one, do you remember what the solution was?
Didn't see that one, do you remember what the solution was?
It was episode 3x05 - "Cooling a Six-Pack".
They tried various methods. The first was somewhat ridiculous - they buried a six pack in sand, covered the sand in gasoline and set fire to it, presumably hoping for some sort of strange thermal reaction. This did nothing but warm the beer up, cover the cans in gas and sand and let off gas fumes.
The second was emptying a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher over some cans. This was the best method, drastically reducing the temperature, but was considered impractical because the fire extinguishers cost too much money to casually waste them on cooling beer.
They tested some simpler methods, none of which were particularly rapid. A mixture of ice, water and salt took 5 minutes to cool the beer down to their reference temperature of 40F. Ice and water was next on 15, a freezer took 25, Ice took 30 and an ordinary fridge took more than 40 minutes.
Finally, Adam and Jamie competed to build machines. Adam built a box on a stand. Inside the box he put a large quantity of liquid nitrogen with a copper pipe that went through the liquid nitrogen, with the idea that you'd pour the beer through a funnel at the top, it would travel down through the pipe and drip down in to a glass under the stand. The first version made the beer too cold to drink and the final version - where Adam mixed ice in with the nitrogen because the beer was freezing solid inside the pipe - left it too warm.
Jamie created a large aluminum heatsink on a stick which he dipped in to liquid nitrogen to cool and then directly in to the beer. This barely had any effect.
Interesting, thanks. I usually just put beer in the refrigerator or freezer, but it makes sense that ice water is more effective in cooling the beer.
Actualy the CO2 extinguisher made it cold in seconds.
But ice+salt water did it within minutes.
Strictly speaking, anything that happens within seconds also happens within minutes.
