Science Fair Project

Team member: Rick Lin, Eric Kuo

Date: 12/2014
Advisor: Mr. David Wen

1. Question: What makes ice melt fastest?

2. Hypothesis: We think that we can find something can help melt ice faster than salt
3. Variables:
I.
II.
III.

Independent Variable- Powder and Liquid we add.

Dependent Variable- Volume of the water that melted.
Controlled Variables:

Temperature.
Amount of each powder.
Material of the bowl.

4. Materials:

Salt.
Sugar.
Flour.
Four bowls.
Alcohol
Baking soda
Black vinegar
Thermometer.
Graduated cylinder.
Guanidine chloride

5. Background Research:
I.

What is the reasoning behind your hypothesis?

Have you ever looked inside the kitchen? The food needs to be fresh
before cooking it, but in order to keep it fresh, they put them in the refrigerator,
and after taking it out, the chief needs to unfreeze it, by doing that, the food may
no longer be fresh. Theres a Chinese culture that requires a group of people
carrying the palanquin and walk through the burning charcoal. Normally they
would burn themselves by doing that, but they dont. The reason why is that they
will spill salt over the charcoal before burning them, salt has the characteristic of
cooling the temperature, therefore the fire wont be as hot as it should be. At a lot
of place that have cold and bad weather, the road or their house often cover by

II.

some heavy snow, and those snow will Obstruction them, so they often use salt to
make the snow melt faster. The salt works by lowering the melting or freezing
point of water. The effect is termed 'freezing point depression'. For a solution of
table salt (sodium chloride, NaCl) in water, this temperature is -21C (-6F) under
controlled lab conditions. In the real world, on a real sidewalk, sodium chloride
can melt ice only down to about -9C (15F). Sodium chloride isn't the only salt
used for de-icing, nor is it necessarily the best choice. Sodium chloride dissolves
into two types of particles: one sodium ion and one chloride ion per sodium
chloride 'molecule'. A compound that yields more ions into a water solution would
lower the freezing point of water more than salt. For example, calcium chloride
(CaCl2) dissolves into three ions (one of calcium and two of chloride) and lowers
the freezing point of water more than sodium chloride. But why still do this
experiment after we already knew that salt can slow down the melting speed? We
want to compare, compare to other powder or Liquid, and see how big the
difference between these is, and find something that can replace salt because it can
melt faster than ice or can get this material easily
What relevant information have you learned about your topic?
A. Different materials of the bowl will affect the result.
B. Different colors of the bowl will affect the result.
C. Different environment of the experiment will affect the result.
D. The shape of the ice will affect the result.
E. The surface area of the spreading materials will affect the result.

6. Procedure:
In order to do this project, these are the steps of calculating the mass of melting water.
First for the powder part, prepare five different bowls and put the same amount of ice in
it.
Second, carefully add three different materials that we want to test on, in the same time,
we set timer at five minutes. Do not sprinkle anything on the forth one, which will be our
control.
Third, Note down the starting time, to record it down for experiment.

7. Results:
Time
Mass of melt
water

5mins

10 mins

15mins

16g of
water
6g of water

22.5g of
water
15g of

Material

Salt 5g add
30g of ice
Sugar 5g

Didnt melt
Didnt melt

All melt(we
add also
100g of
material
and 50g of
ice to
compare to
the next
Experiment)
33.59
45.67

add 30g of
ice
Flour 5g add
30g of ice
Baking soda
5g add 30g
of ice
Guanidine
chloride
Nothing

water
Didnt melt

1g of water

120.61

3g of water

1.5g of
water
6g of water

Didnt melt
Didnt melt

Didnt melt

5g of water

110.25

Didnt melt

5g of water

10g of
water

55.31

102.09

After the first Experiment, we saw that at the first five minutes, none of
those melt so we decide to increase the Quantity of the material and wait
for all of the ice melt at the liquid part so we can compare easily.
None
30g of salt
Add salt
Melt
time
Material

Alcohol
100g+50g of
ice
Water
100g+50g of
ice
Black vinegar
100g+50g of
ice
Hydrogen
Peroxide
100g+50g of
ice

24.02

Insoluble

37.23

31.06

25.39

Didnt change

33.58

30.55

8. Analysis:
In the powder part the salt and sugar increase the melting speed but Flour, Baking soda
and Guanidine chloride decrease the melting speed. The sugar melt slower than salt, so in
the powder part, so for the hypothesis, we cant find something that can replace salt
because it can melt faster than ice or can get this material easily.
For the liquid part,

9. Conclusion:
When water is transferring into ice, ice is also transferring into water, but because
the rate of both reactions are the same, therefore we are not able to see it. We put salt on
ice, the water that was melted and ready to freeze into ice, instead of doing so, it dissolve

the salt we added. When water freezes into ice, this reaction required heat, but salt
dissolve in water also needed heat, thus the rate of freezing would decrease, and the ice
would of course melt into water. Sugar dissolves in water, too, but the reason why it
didnt show the same result as salt, is that the heat that requires during the reaction is less
than salt does. Flour doesnt dissolve, so the water that melted was just because the
thermal of the air transferred to ice. We infer that what made the last two experiment had
different result, is that a certain amount of water had mixed with flour and became some
dough. We used to think that whatever thing that can destroy waters Hydrogen bond can
make ice melt faster, so we add Guanidine chloride into our material to do experiment,
but the result slows us that Guanidine chloride make ice melt even slower.
Liquid form have greater Area so it can react faster than the solid form, so as the
result of the data, add salt into water can make ice melt faster than just add salt, and we
use alcohol and black vinegar to destroy the Hydrogen bond of the water to melt ice and
it worked is makes ice melt faster than salt water, so we can prove that our hypothesis is
right.

10.Application:
This particular characteristic has already been highly used in Taiwan local culture:
When the temple activities, we can see a number of people carrying the palanquin and
walk across the burning charcoal with barefoot, but they dont get burned, the reason why
is that, once the charcoal has burned to a certain level, people sprinkle salt on it, decrease
the temperature of the charcoal.
It can also be used in thawing ingredients.

11. References
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fairprojects/project_ideas/Chem_p049.shtml#summary
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/a/aa120703a.htm