Hot Ice
Hot Ice
Hot Ice
HOT ICE
By
LOUIGI I. PACULBA
September 2022
Objective
At the end of this Report the students of EPS 131 section TB know the
following:
To know the science behind, and be acquainted with, natural and
artificial occurrences of phase changes.
To understand supercooling and supersaturation
To understand the differences between physical changes and
chemical changes
Introduction
Motivation\Prompting Question
1. What important role does acetic acid play a role about the
solidification of the solution?
2. What product could be possibly formed using the Sodium Acetate
solution?
3. Will the starting temperature affect the crystal growth and heat
generation in a supersaturated sodium acetate solution?
4. What concentration of sodium acetate produces the most heat?
Materials Needed
Procedure
1. Sprinkle baking soda into the pot and pour vinegar over it, stir thor-
oughly.
2. Put the resulting solution on the basin and evaporate until it turns dry
and try to break up the lumps of the resulting powder.
3. Then put the powder in the glass container, add water and heat in a wa-
ter bath until it dissolves completely.
4. Move the resulting solution to the beaker and allow to cool.
5. Touch with your finger or pour it and observe the formation of
crystals and the release of heat.
Discussion/Result
In the hot ice experiment, the sodium acetate is used to show how
supercooling and supersaturation work together. A supersaturatedis a solution in
which the solute is more than the solvent. In this case the solute is the Sodium
Acetate and the solvent is the water. The sodium acetate solution contains water.
We reduced the amount of water in the solution by boiling it, but there is still water
in there. The water molecules keep the sodium acetate from forming crystals. Well,
crystals may start to form, but as a few molecules join together, the water molecules
pull them apart again. When we cooled the solution, we were able to bring the
sodium acetate down to a temperature lower than the point at which it would
normally become a solid. This word for this is super cooled. The crystals in the tray
provided a starting point for crystals to grow in the solution, called a nucleation site.
This gave the sodium acetate the push it needed to crystallize.
Conclusion
In conclusion, almost every substance has a freezing point, but for something
to solidify the molecules rearrange from liquid to solid or crystal arrangement.
However hot ice, or sodium acetate, is a super-cool liquid where the molecules do
not rearrange until they are disturbed, in this case by introducing sodium acetate it
begin to crystallize.
Recommendation
Acknowledgement
Lastly, to the Almighty God, I am thankful for the guidance, courage, the
hope and the strength that he has given to me while going the experiment.
References
The “Melting-Point” of Hydrated Sodium Acetate: Solubility Curves | The
Journal of Physical Chemistry (acs.org)
British Science Week: Home science experiment - making hot ice – How It Works
(howitworksdaily.com)