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Mackntish t1_j6vmbwq wrote

I feel like there's a lot of silly answers in here. A simple Google search reveals that yes, salt lowers the tempature of ice by melting it. Melting is an endothremic process, and it makes the mixture colder. Which basically means that it releases the cold of the ice into the environment faster.

But! Because the cold is released faster, it means it will warm faster. Because the difference in tempature between the cooler and outside is greater.

So they are half right. It does make it colder, but not for longer.

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wassimu t1_j6vqoz6 wrote

You cannot ”release the cold”. Cold is not a thing. There is only heat. Heat flows along temperature gradients. So you can add heat or lose heat and that’s it. Ice has heat, as does everything in the universe that is not at absolute zero.

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gvilleneuve t1_j6vpt0b wrote

Due to this happening inside a cooler, it will end up being colder longer as well

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Mackntish t1_j6wqz17 wrote

Uh, no, releasing the cold quickly or slowly does not change the total amount of coldness that there is to be released.

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gvilleneuve t1_j6z5k6w wrote

The lower you can get the temp of the cooler, the longer it will take to warm up. Simple as.

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SirReal_Realities t1_j6w5gzm wrote

Coolers keep things cool longer. I can see the salty ice water absorbing heat from the fish faster (thus slightly warming the salty ice water faster than non-salty ice water, but it doesn’t make sense that the contents of the cooler would take less time to reach room temperature. If you start off with a cooler at -15 degrees, it will take longer to reach room temperature than a cooler at 0 degrees; If not, then you don’t have a insulated chest, you have a bucket of ice.

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