In article , Richard J Kinch wrote:
Doug Miller writes:

That's just complete nonsense -- suggest you look up, and compare, the
specific heat of water vs. specific heat of ice.

Nope. The heat of fusion, not the specific heat, is what flash chills. As
I said, the phase change is crucial.

It doesn't seem that you've ever made ice cream at home.

Quite right that the phase change is crucial. However, you're utterly mistaken
when you think that the cooling will be most rapid if the melt water is
drained away. The objective is to remove heat from the can of beer as rapidly
as possible, and that will happen when the beer is immersed in a bath of
icewater. Not when it's immersed in a pile of ice.

And the reason for that is that water is a better conductor of heat than ice,
and thus heat transfers from the beer can to water faster than it transfers
from the beer can to ice. On top of that, water transfers heat away from the
beer can by convection as well as conduction, and obviously ice won't.

In short, rapid heat transfer is the name of the game, and you get that with
icewater, not with ice.



--
Regards,
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

It's time to throw all their damned tea in the harbor again.