Practical 1 - Investigating how quickly each ice cream melts

Practical 1 - Investigating how quickly each ice cream melts

21.0g of each ice cream was placed on top of a sieve and was allowed to melt for 30 minutes. The melted ice cream was collected in a large beaker underneath the sieve and was weighed after the experiment was completed.

Cheap ice cream at 10 minutes

Average ice cream at 10 minutes

Expensive ice cream at 10 minutes

Nadia and Antonia taking the temperature of the ice cream

By the end of the experiment we found that the most expensive had melted the quickest and the medium priced ice cream had melted the slowest. In addition the medium priced ice cream had barley melted even though its temperature had gone above freezing. If we consider the physics of freezing, temperature is a measure of how fast atoms or molecules move around. in order for freezing to occur the movement must slow down in order for strong bonds to form between them. Therefore there must have been others factors stopping the ice cream from melting. 

Amount of expensive ice cream collected 

Amount of medium priced ice cream collected

Amount of cheap ice cream collected

The following is the results from the experiment 

From the experiment we concluded that the most expensive ice cream melted the quickest at the medium priced melted the slowest. We believe that the expensive ice cream melted the fastest because it contained all natural ingredients whilst the medium priced ice cream  melted the slowest because it contains multiple ingredients including stabilisers and  emulsifiers.


The diagrams below shows what happens when the ice creams melts.