COLD ICE AND WARM ICE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 22, 1902

COLD ICE AND WARM ICE.

The college professor asked the rest of us whether ice was colder in winter than it was in summer. Now, to the rest of us, ice was ice; and therefore we could not see how it could remain ice and be either colder or warmer. Then the professor explained the thing in this fashion:—

If a thermometer is buried in ice in summer, it will indicate 32 degrees. If you throw a piece of ice into boiling water, and leave it there until it is almost gone, what is left will still be 32 degrees. Ice can never be gotten above that temperature.

But while ice can never be warmed above 32 degrees, it will go as much below that as the weather does. An iceman, delivering ice one zero day in January, was asked whether his ice was any colder than in July. He thought not. But, as a matter of fact, a piece of summer ice, if he had had it, would have been something of a foot warmer for him, as it would have been 30 degrees warmer than the air of the bottom of his wagon.

Mixing salt with ice makes it much colder. The ice in a wine-cooler goes down to about zero. This is why the point zero on our common thermometers was fixed where it is. It was supposed to be the lowest point which could be reached by artificial means. Since then we have reached about 383 degrees below zero by chemical processes.

Ice will cool down with everything else on a cold night to zero or below. What should prevent it? On a day when it is just freezing, a block of iron, a block of ice, outdoors will stay at 32 degrees. If the weather grows warmer, the iron will warm up with the weather, but the ice will stay at 32 degrees and melt away. But if the weather grows colder, the iron and the ice will cool off, and one just as much as the other.

As the ice grows colder, it gets harder and more brittle. There can be no hickory bend on a skating pond on a zero day, for the ice then is too brittle. [This is not true, for the higher temperature of the water below thin ice prevents the extreme brittleness. The first frozen ice of the winter, it matters not how low the mercury, is the most elastic. We have tried it. Ed. S. of T.] Slivers of ice dipped into liquid air become so hard that they will cut glass. Water thrown on ice in the arctic regions will shiver it like pouring boiling water upon cold glass. This is because the ice is so much colder than the water.—Beverages.