The Challenge: Make Ice |
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Evaporation
As you might expect, we want our cooling liquid to be colder than 0°C (32°F) to
turn our water into ice. As the cooling liquid absorbs energy from
the water there's a danger it will heat up. We can stave off this
rise in temperature by using evaporation which takes heat energy
away by forming vapor. Have you ever wondered why you feel cold as you get
out of the swimming pool, even on a hot day? That's evaporation:
the water on your skin evaporates, taking heat energy from your
skin, and using it to break the hydrogen bonds between water molecules
as the liquid turns to vapor.
Evaporation
occurs when there is sufficient energy to enable the fastest moving
molecules to break the inter-molecular bonds in a liquid at its
surface.
Since the temperature we measure depends on the average speed of the molecules, if the
faster molecules escape from the liquid the average molecular speed
is reduced and the temperature falls. The hotter the liquid, the
more molecules there are moving rapidly so the faster it evaporates
and the greater the cooling effect.
Obviously there is a top limit involved here the boiling point. At this temperature
we have the maximum possible rate of evaporation and hence the fastest
cooling.
Lowering the evaporation point 
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