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januarytwentysecond t1_j3s7qm0 wrote

I know this! This was an elementary school science fair project of a good friend of mine - four equally measured bowls of ice, two in strainers, half with salt. The strainers lasted far longer than the bowls, the salt didn't have much effect. Empirically, not draining melts faster.

As for the why, there's plenty of pontificating here. My own thought is that heat transfer from ice to water is much faster than ice to air (see liquid-cooling), and the hemisphere of water had a larger surface of contact with the bowl below and the air above to absorb warmth from.

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Chemomechanics t1_j3scs65 wrote

> Empirically, not draining melts faster.

For that container material and geometry and those environmental conditions, etc. Dropping these qualifies gives an unequivocal statement that's not convincing, considering the various factors discussed in this thread.

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kilotesla t1_j3tzhd4 wrote

Those sound like valid results to me. One thing that I'd want to be a little bit careful of is the initial temperature of the bowl. If you had a bowl that started out at room temperature, and it was thick and heavy, it's thermal mass could contribute to the faster melting.

One other question is whether the ice was in the form of cubes, such that air could flow in between them in the strainer case, or whether it was perhaps frozen in the bowls so it was one solid hunk of ice

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