Doug Miller wrote:
In article , wrote:
Doug Miller wrote:
....
Pop a room-temperature beer into, say, 20 or 30 kg of ice at -20 deg C in a
well-insulated container, and the beer will eventually assume pretty near the
same temperature as the ice, long before any significant melting of the ice
can occur.
That "well-insulated" would have to be adiabatic, but in that case the
end result would be about right if the mass of the ice were large wrt
the beer.
OTOH, put the same beer, and the same 20 or 30 kg of ice at -20 C into a water
bath, and the beer will *never* get colder than 0 C.
Which, of course, is why you add salt when you're making homemade ice cream:
so that the ice will melt at a lower temperature, giving you a water bath
that's much colder than 0 C.
The prize! _Finally_, somebody made a cogent explanation...
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