New Thing #353--Chill Out

I wanted a soda with my lunch today. There were some cans in the pantry, but none in the refrigerator, and I think nothing is worse than warm soda. I could have gotten a glass and poured the soda over ice, but today I used everyday ingredients to chill my can of soda in two minutes.

The principle is the same one that I used years ago when we made homemade ice cream. When you add salt to a ice and water mixture, the salt lowers the freezing point of the water, meaning it gets colder than it normally could. Agitating the can of soda makes the whole cooling process go faster.

The steps:

• Fill a container with water and add ice to it. (I used a 50/50 mix of ice and water, and performed my experiment in a six-cup measuring cup since I was only chilling one can of soda.)


• Add a handful of salt to the ice. (Rock salt would probably have worked better, but all we had in the garage was something called "ice melt"; I didn't know if it would have the same effect. I used table salt, and it did the trick.)


• Place your drink in the ice water solution and rapidly stir it around. (My hands were already cold, so I used a wooden spoon for this step.)


• Wait two minutes, then test.
  

I was skeptical that my room-temperature soda could get cold so quickly, but it really worked! Next time, though, I would chill the can another minute, because I like my soda really cold.