Fishing for Ice

"I'd rather attempt to do something great and fail than attempt to do nothing and succeed." - Robert H. Schuller

Here is a cold but entertaining experiment letting you learn something new about two very common household items that you might have not known.

Materials:

• Some water in a cup

• yarn or string(about a foot long)

• Salt

• Ice cubes

Directions:

1) Place ice cubes in the cup of water, and they will float.

2) Try to catch one of the ice cubes, and make it stick onto the string. Does it work?

3) Place the string in the water, and across the ice cubes.

4) Now, sprinkle a bit of salt across the ice cubes and wait for a few minutes.

5) What did you catch?

Science Behind This All:

You can try fishing for ice! Why do people spread salt on the floor, around walkways, or on the stairs when they are frozen over? The logic is quite simple. Spreading salt on ice lowers its freezing point, so when it is cold, ice is less likely to freeze when salt is spread around the area! In other words, the sprinkling of salt on ice allows the ice to melt a little and then freeze up again. This allows the yarn/string to be embedded into the ice.