Melting Ice - A Fundraiser
Most recent answer: 10/22/2007
Q:
I’m at my last yr at school, and we have to rasie money for our school, so we thought of putting a jelly bean in water, then freezing it into a rectangle. We want to put it in small fridge like thing and try to keep the air temp at 20 degrees and letting them guess when the rectangle will melt and the jelly bean hit the floor, and who ever guess closed will win, but my problem is we don’t no how long this will take, and i was wondering is there a formula that we could use to get a rough idea on how fast it will melt??
- Dave (age 17)
Galston, Australia
- Dave (age 17)
Galston, Australia
A:
Dave -
That sounds like a really cool way to raise money - very creative. My suggestion would be that you try it once before-hand if you want to know about how long it will take. This is because there really isn’t any easy way to estimate it with equations. There certainly are equations out there that are used to figure out how fast heat will move from one place to another (i.e. from the air into your icecube)... but the equations are very complex and depend on a lot of things that you probably wouldn’t be able to figure out. For example, refrigerators with different shapes and sizes will allow air to move around in them differently. The way that the air moves through the container affects how quickly it can move heat.
On a more practical note, I would suggest that you use a marble (or something else) instead of a jelly-bean because jelly-beans will disolve in water, which would be sort of gross.
Here’s another message we got having to do with your question - apparently you’re not alone in your idea!
I’ve notice that you have had a few questions in regard to melting an ice block in 20 C & the formulaes involved.( eg school fundraiser & the jellybean) Just to fill you in, there is currently a competition running Australia to guess the exact time for a packet of Tim Tams (choclate biscuit, highly regarded in Australia) to touch the ground, where it is initally contained in a 15 tonne block of ice, & then air temp is kept at 20 C. Well if guess right you get $1 Million. For details visit , & you’ll see the comp. Cheers Mark.
Mark (age 25)
Brisbane, Australia
Thanks Mark!
-Tamara
That sounds like a really cool way to raise money - very creative. My suggestion would be that you try it once before-hand if you want to know about how long it will take. This is because there really isn’t any easy way to estimate it with equations. There certainly are equations out there that are used to figure out how fast heat will move from one place to another (i.e. from the air into your icecube)... but the equations are very complex and depend on a lot of things that you probably wouldn’t be able to figure out. For example, refrigerators with different shapes and sizes will allow air to move around in them differently. The way that the air moves through the container affects how quickly it can move heat.
On a more practical note, I would suggest that you use a marble (or something else) instead of a jelly-bean because jelly-beans will disolve in water, which would be sort of gross.
Here’s another message we got having to do with your question - apparently you’re not alone in your idea!
I’ve notice that you have had a few questions in regard to melting an ice block in 20 C & the formulaes involved.( eg school fundraiser & the jellybean) Just to fill you in, there is currently a competition running Australia to guess the exact time for a packet of Tim Tams (choclate biscuit, highly regarded in Australia) to touch the ground, where it is initally contained in a 15 tonne block of ice, & then air temp is kept at 20 C. Well if guess right you get $1 Million. For details visit , & you’ll see the comp. Cheers Mark.
Mark (age 25)
Brisbane, Australia
Thanks Mark!
-Tamara
(published on 10/22/2007)