on today's episode we're talking about ice that's not melting welcome to impossible science
hey everyone it's jason latimer world champion of magic coming to you with another impossible
science as a magician i tend to focus on properties that are being changed so like in my
stage show bending light or shaping water i try to change the property of what you think that object
would be doing and in this case can i get ice to refuse to melt now what you just saw was a trick
but it did make me think is there a way to make that illusion a reality through science and it
turns out there is an actual reason why your microwave has that defrost button and that ice
in your microwave doesn't melt the way you think it does a microwave oven heats up our food and
beverages by using actual microwaves oscillating at roughly 2.5 billion times per second
these microwaves reflect back and forth inside the oven forming a standing wave with an oscillating
electric field the electric field in these waves exerts a twisting force on any water
molecule because the positive and negative charges in each water molecule are separated
this allows the waves to speed up the rotations and this additional energy soon speeds up the
molecules as they move around colliding with each other this is exactly what it means to heat
something up but inside an ice cube the individual water molecules are not able to rotate because
they're bound together by what's called a hydrogen bond these hydrogen bonds are so strong they're
strong enough to prevent the rotation even when the microwave is on so microwaves cannot really
heat up ice very much at all now that we know what should happen let's take a look for ourselves
now that we understand how a microwave works that makes the experiment of ice
not melting in a microwave make a little bit more sense with the electromagnetic field flipping
back and forth we can now see why the water molecules are now spinning at different rates
which is making it absorb energy and that's creating the heat and that's what gets water hot
in a microwave but with ice the electromagnetic field flipping back and forth is not strong
enough to break that hydrogen bond to get it to rotate since it's not rotating it's not absorbing
energy and that makes it stay ice it doesn't melt to do this experiment you're gonna need
two plastic containers i'm gonna do one with water and i'm gonna do one with ice and for the
kids watching the show make sure that you have your parents permission to help you out on this
experiment because we are going to be dealing with some hot water i'll be using my safety goggles and
i've got a safety glove for when the water comes out because it's going to be hot in this case i'm
going to take a temperature of the water about 67 degrees while the ice is 13 degrees fahrenheit
now to do this experiment we're gonna actually take out the glass tray put the ice in there
and the water you can do this with just one minute to see the difference but i'm
gonna make it two minutes because i really want to show the difference
now the reason why we took the glass plate out is because glass is made up of mainly sodium
and other impurities but there are actually sodium ions which means it's an atom or molecule that has
some type of net charge which works much like the water molecules that are rotating back and forth
that net charge interacts with electromagnetic field and allows us to absorb heat
wow
that's amazing you can still see the frost on the ice the ice it's heat up a little bit it says a
temperature of 26. this is 157 degrees fahrenheit this is still ice that's a pretty mind-blowing
experiment right it looks like magic that ice is defying what's happening inside the microwave but
once you understand the science it makes perfect sense well if you enjoy making an impossible topic
reality through science let me know click the like button share the video with your friends
and if you enjoy making impossible topics a reality well make sure you subscribe to
the channel and until next time stay curious because the right question changes everything
you