The Great Ice Melt – Round Three

Ice Cube 1 (Plastic Tray): It is totally gone now. Just a big puddle, and the heater made the puddle warm up really fast.

Ice Cube 2 (Styrofoam Box): This one is still a small piece, like a big sugar cube, but it is wobbly now, so it must be almost ready to melt completely.

The "Why": The plastic tray is bad because it is thin and flat, so the heat just hits it right away. The styrofoam is good because the bubbles are like tiny little walls stopping the heat from getting in nicely.

What happened?: The plastic tray ice turned into a liquid really quick because the heat went right through the hard plastic. The styrofoam ice cube stayed solid for ages because the heat had to bounce off all the little bubbles before it could touch the ice and make it change into a liquid. It takes a long time for the heat to move through the bubbles.

Slow Down Melting Idea: The feedback said metal is a super-fast slide for heat and that I need something 'fluffy' or 'thick' that moves heat slowly. I thought about that. Since the styrofoam worked because it had lots of little gaps, I need something with even more gaps than the styrofoam!

"To slow down the melting even more, I would wrap the ice in... because..."

I would wrap the ice in... a big pillow full of feathers... because feathers are super fluffy, and they are just little balls of air trapped inside, so they have way more gaps and little spaces than the styrofoam box did. The heat will get lost trying to get through all those air spaces and it will never reach the ice to turn it into a liquid the way it did on the plastic tray. This will make it stay frozen until next week.