Rock Salt

You guys were so nice to answer my dry ice question earlier this year, I wondered if someone could help me out with this one. I have hot dog carts that require canned sodas on ice. A customer told me that if I put "rock salt" on the ice it would keep the ice from melting. Anyone know this to be true? Goes against my "melt the ice on the roads" upbringing in Buffalo, but she swore by it. TIA, debbie

Quite the opposite. Salt applied to ice will cause the ice to melt faster. That's why they put salt on icey roads.


The fact that the ice is more quickly melted, means that the heat to used to melt the ice is drawn faster from the surroundings. So the effect is that material surrounding the ice/salt mixture will cool faster.


If you follow your friends advice, you're soda will get cold quicker but not stay cold for as long.

no, no, you put salt on the road so that the freezing point of water is lowered. this makes it harder for ice to form on the road in the first place.


in any case you would get sodas that tasted salty as you would have trouble getting all the salt off the rim of the cans.

the ice will not melt too fast if you put a closed cell foam insulation over it, like a camping type blue pad. or get that reflective insulation thats very similar to the car window reflectors.

[CORed]

Use enough rock salt and you will have frozen sodas. The salt will lower the melting point of the ice. Hasn't anybody ever made ice cream the old fashioned way? You use ice and rock salt to freeze it.