The Effects of the Shape of Ice on Its Melting Time - Lab Report Example

We kept the bottles in hot water until we heard the ice crack and it slid from the bottle. When ice slid from each bottle we immediately measured the height and diameter of each ice piece. Then we placed each piece of ice on a wire grate and noted which piece of ice had come from which bottle. We placed the wire grate with pieces of ice on it away from the wind and waited for the ice to melt and noted the time with the stopwatch.

Meanwhile, we calculated the surface area of the cylindrical ice pieces using the formula 2rh + 2r2; where r is the radius and h is the height of each piece of ice. We have used the formula of a cylinder to find the surface area of all pieces of ice because all pieces of ice frozen in different medicinal bottles had assumed almost the same cylindrical shape but they all had different diameters. We then repeated the whole experiment three times using the same medicine bottles and noted the time taken for ice pieces to melt in each trial as follows Ice pieces in bottle number 1234Surface area of the ice piece in cm360504030Average time in minutes10152024Time taken in trial one101419.

525Time taken in trial two101520.523Time taken in trial three10162024Our experiment proved that the shape of a piece of ice affects its melting time. As can be seen in the table the greater the surface area of a piece of ice the smaller its melting time. The ice piece with a surface area of 60cm3 melted in only ten minutes while it took about 24 minutes for the ice piece with a 30cm3 surface area to melt. Ice is made up of water molecules H2O. Two atoms of hydrogen are attached to one molecule of oxygen in one molecule of water or ice.

Each oxygen molecule in ice is linked to four other oxygen molecules through covalent and hydrogen bonds to form a tetrahedral arrangement. Water molecules in this shape do possess some kinetic energy but that is just enough to allow water molecules to vibrate in their place and they are not allowed to break through their tetrahedral arrangement and move away from other water molecules. When the ice starts to melt, it absorbs heat from the outside. An ice piece of a specific mass and density needs to absorb a specific minimum energy before it can start to melt.

This specific minimum amount of energy required is known as the Latent Heat of Melting. Since in our experiment, we used one ounce of water for each piece of ice, the mass and density of each piece of ice we used was the same and thus the Latent Heat of Melting required by each piece of ice was the same. Although in our experiment each piece of ice required the same amount of energy to melt, the ice pieces made from differently shaped medicine bottles melted at different times. This is because each piece of ice had a different surface area.

The surface area of the ice determines how much area of the ice is exposed to the environment from which it can absorb heat to melt; thus the greater the surface area, the greater the amount of heat the ice can absorb from the environment to melt. Since in our experiment ice pieces with larger surface areas were able to absorb heat faster, they gained Latent Heat of Melting faster which caused them to melt faster than other ice pieces with smaller surface areas.