Public Information
Irish Heatwave Science Experiment!
Are you enjoying this heatwave as much as us? Check out our Irish heatwave science experiment!
Science Ice Cream Experiment
Looking for something tasty to cool you down in this heatwave? Try out our really simple and fun ice cream experiment!
Method:
Making the Ice Cream:
- Add 20ml of cold milk into a small ziplock bag.
- Add 1 tsp of caster sugar and shake it to dissolve the sugar.
- Add your flavouring (2 drops of vanilla essence or 1 tsp of hot chocolate powder!)
- Zip the bag closed and shake it carefully, mixing all of the ingredients. Dont open your bag again until your ice cream is ready to eat.
Making the Freezer:
- Get a bowl and put half the ice into it.
- Sprinkle two table spoons of salt onto the ice.
- Put your bag of ice cream mixture into the bowl of ice. DO NOT OPEN THE ICE CREAM BAG! You don’t want to get salt into your ice cream!!
- Put the rest of the ice on top of the ice cream bag and sprinkle the other two table spoons of salt over the ice.
- Carefully pour 100ml of water over the ice into the bowl.
- Leave your ice cream for 5-10 minutes and it will be frozen!
- Take the bag out of your homemade freezer and wipe all the salt water off it.
- Grab a spoon and enjoy your homemade science ice cream and the heatwave while it lasts!
Materials:
(serves 1)
- Small Ziplock Bag
- 20ml milk
- 1 tsp Caster Sugar
- Flavouring (2 drops Vanilla Essence or 1 tsp Chocolate Powder)
- 2 tbsp salt
- Ice Cubes
- Cereal Bowl
- 100ml water
- Cloth
- Spoon
What is the science behind it?
In Ireland we are pretty used to putting salt on ice to melt it, such as putting salt on our roads and paths. When we want the ice to get colder in this experiment why are we putting ice on it?!
A really interesting thing happens when salt is put on ice. The salt is an impurity in the ice, which causes the freezing point drop. This means that the ice starts to melt. This melting requires energy to work so the reaction takes the heat energy from the melt water and the room. This causes the temperature of the mixture to get really cold. It can go as cold as -16°C! If you look at the outside of your freezer bowl you might even see that the reaction causes the water in the air in the room to freeze onto the bowl!
The Ancient Romans used to send people up into the mountains during hot summers to collect ice so that they could make ice cream using this method to cool down!
