Adventures in Parenting

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Mass and melting

by Graham // 2 comments // tagged with: museums, church


Photo taken Jul 21, 2009

At the American Museum of Natural History today the volunteer educators were out! This volunteer showed the girls two identically sized slabs. One was metal, and the other a medium weight foam rubber. The metal slab came out of the freezer, and was cold to the touch. The rubber one was room temperature. The educator asked the girls on which slab would an ice cube melt more quickly. They (and I) responded: the warm one.

Then she put one ice cube on each slab. The one on the cold slab melted quickly in front of us, and the other hardly melted at all! Does anyone else know why?

Comments

Rubber is a poor conductor while (most) metal is a good conductor. It's true of electricity. Would it also be true of heat?

— by Dylan & Kari Valliere about 1 year ago

It is indeed. Even though the metal is cold, its molecules are closely packed and the energy that they do have is quickly passed to the ice cube, which results in melting. What a fun experiment! It had me fooled. :)

— by Graham about 1 year ago


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