Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

Somehow I seem to attract people who love to argue over whether a soda can will in fact get cold quicker if you put it into the freezer instead of the fridge. After having just listened to two of my friends basically scream at each other for almost an hour and not come up with a more nuanced argument than "it does" " it doesn't" I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some science to shut them up.

I'm familliar with google, I did several searches and found nothing of note.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

it's colder in the freezer, therefore the heat in the coke gets drawn out faster, and the coke cools faster.

maybe?

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

are your friends "special"?

OF COURSE it will get faster in the freezer, tell them to look up heat transfer etc.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

ummmm...a freezer is colder than a fridge. things get colder faster in cooler environs?

i guess i'm missing something.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

A freezer is colder than a fridge, therefore it will cool its objects faster.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Somehow I seem to attract people who love to argue over whether a soda can will in fact get cold quicker if you put it into the freezer instead of the fridge. After having just listened to two of my friends basically scream at each other for almost an hour and not come up with a more nuanced argument than "it does" " it doesn't" I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some science to shut them up.

I'm familliar with google, I did several searches and found nothing of note.

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you have some dumb friends.

do a science experiment and find out for yourself. Have your friends bet large sums of money on it. (make sure and put your money on the freezer).

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

This clearly belongs in the Trainwreck.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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Somehow I seem to attract people who love to argue over whether a soda can will in fact get cold quicker if you put it into the freezer instead of the fridge. After having just listened to two of my friends basically scream at each other for almost an hour and not come up with a more nuanced argument than "it does" " it doesn't" I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some science to shut them up.

I'm familliar with google, I did several searches and found nothing of note.

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this is kind of tough to do so bear with me:
you need the following:
2 cans of coke
2 thermometers
1 stop watch type thing

put the cans in the fridge and freezer at the same time..hit the start or go button on the stop watch and then after said time take them out and put the thermometers in them....


i cant believe i just wasted my time writing this

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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[ QUOTE ]
Somehow I seem to attract people who love to argue over whether a soda can will in fact get cold quicker if you put it into the freezer instead of the fridge. After having just listened to two of my friends basically scream at each other for almost an hour and not come up with a more nuanced argument than "it does" " it doesn't" I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some science to shut them up.

I'm familliar with google, I did several searches and found nothing of note.

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you have some dumb friends.

do a science experiment and find out for yourself. Have your friends bet large sums of money on it. (make sure and put your money on the freezer).

[/ QUOTE ]

At this point I propably draw myself out of betting. There is always some catch and it's -EV to bet for the obvious choice...

I believe the freezer is the right choice, but you never know....

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

1/4 of the times I've done this, I've forgotten I did it and had to spend an hour cleaning my freezer.

So I stopped doing it.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

Newton's Law of Cooling

Basically what it says is that the farther the object's temperature is from the ambient tempeture, the exponentially faster it approaches the ambient temperature. So as an object gets closer, it slows down.

Thus, if you put the soda can in the freezer it has farther to go and thus cools faster.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

Its not a question of "is the fridge faster", its "is the freezer noticeably quicker". Since the differance in temperature is around like 17 degrees, it has been argued (normally by the smarter of the two people arguing which is what threw me initially) that the differance is negligable. It has also been claimed ( and i have no idea the truth to this) that the aluminum can limits the speed at which heat can be drawn out, meaning unless the temperature differential was much greater, there would be no differance. As people apparently aren't convinced by "its colder, duh" i was hoping someone knew a more scientiffic/detailed explanation.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

Have one friend jump in a pool of 50-degree water and the other in a pool of 35-degree water and see which gets hypothermia first.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

It's simple really. Heat transfer depends on a few things: the temperature gradient, the "heat resistance" of the material it passes through, and the heat resistance of the transitions between different materials.

so in this case: the heat resistance of the transition between fridge - coke can (ex. it could be benificial to stack frozen stuff around the can)

the resistance of the can (nothing you can do bout that)

the heat condictivity of the fluid itself (eg. it could cool faster if you take it out every now and then and stir the fluid a little)

the temperature gradient: the bigger the difference between temp of the fluid and the environment, the better the heat transfer

So yeah, it cools faster in the freezer.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

The freezer is cold, for sure, so yeah.

Better yet is to get ice water mixed with salt. If you do this, the water gets much colder (freezing point depression) and the fact that it's liquid on the metal can gives you better heat transfer than the freezer.

Better still is to use rubbing alcohol in ice. This gets quite cold, and I don't think the rubbing alcohol is too bad for you to have in contact with your can of coke. You could use cheap vodka or everclear, too, but that's a waste of booze.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

Obviously the freezer will cool the soda faster...I mean, there's no light in the freezer, right? So, when you shut the door and the light stays on in the fridge (you know, lights emit heat, right, like when you touch a lit light bulb - OUCH!) the light prevents the soda from cooling as fast as the freezer. Now, if you removed the light bulb from inside the fridge, it might be close.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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Have one friend jump in a pool of 50-degree water and the other in a pool of 35-degree water and see which gets hypothermia first.

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Prop bet? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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Have one friend jump in a pool of 50-degree water and the other in a pool of 35-degree water and see which gets hypothermia first.

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Prop bet? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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My money's on the tennis pro.

Clearly the question should be whether it is harder to drink a gallon of milk that has been in the freezer for 15 minutes than one that has been in the fridge.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

I would think you would need a degree in physics/chemistry to really know the answer.

Or you could just not be a [censored] dumbass. Of course it gets colder faster. You've got dumb friends.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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Newton's Law of Cooling

Basically what it says is that the farther the object's temperature is from the ambient tempeture, the exponentially faster it approaches the ambient temperature. So as an object gets closer, it slows down.

Thus, if you put the soda can in the freezer it has farther to go and thus cools faster.

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Yes, but this is only true when the test objects are the same temp. I had an idiot of a friend in college (no idea how he even got accepted) who used this to try and prove that hot water will freeze faster than cold water if we put them in the freezer. I laughed and laughed. He was so adamant about it that we decided to run an experiment, but not before I got my bet in for a week of lunch. Let's just say that the following week, my food bills were a lot less!

There are many sudies about this and in fact many do show that warmer water DOES in fact freeze faster than colder water SOMETIMES depending on the situations. This is called the Mpemba effect. But my friend was an idiot and REALLY wanted to prove his point so he put his water in the microwave for 5 minutes to get it almost boiling and I took mine out of the water jug in the fridge. It wasn't even a fair fight! I did not give him any clue that he was actually onto something as he was taking something he heard and making it extreme which blew the properties of the effect out of proportion.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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The freezer is cold, for sure, so yeah.

Better yet is to get ice water mixed with salt. If you do this, the water gets much colder (freezing point depression) and the fact that it's liquid on the metal can gives you better heat transfer than the freezer.


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They did this test on Myth Busters last season. They were trying to determine the quickest way to chill beer. The myth was that you could chill beer the quickest by burying it in sand, pouring gasoline on the sand, then lighting the gasoline on fire. The theory was that the fire would draw the heat out of the sand and chill the beer. Predictably, all they ended up with was beer cans that smelled like gasoline containing beer that wasn't any colder.

They also tested a bunch of other ways to chill beer in order to find the best method. The best method by far was to use saltwater and ice.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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[ QUOTE ]
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Have one friend jump in a pool of 50-degree water and the other in a pool of 35-degree water and see which gets hypothermia first.

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Prop bet? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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My money's on the tennis pro.

Clearly the question should be whether it is harder to drink a gallon of milk that has been in the freezer for 15 minutes than one that has been in the fridge.

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Does he have to benchpress his bodyweight while doing it?

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

It definitely cools faster in the freezer.

However, the thermal conductivity of air is very small. I'm not sure if this was the reason that your friend was thinking that it wouldn't be faster. It still will be, but there's an even faster way.

The thermal conductivity of solids/liquids is much greater. This is why putting the soda into a cold water bath with ice (i.e. in a cooler) will chill it much much faster than fridge or freezer.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

Do your friends have one of those weird freezers that are actually warmer than the fridge? Do they not know the difference between hot and cold? Do they believe the fridge and the freezer are magical black boxes?

I suggest a prop bet involving two identical cans of pop (yes, pop), a thermometer, a refridgerator, and a freezer set to a temperature noticeably colder than the refridgerator. Be sure to have the experiment run for a long enough time to get significant cooling, but not long enough to reach stable temperature. Maybe you'd be well-served to heat the pop up a bit in order to give yourself a greater temperature gradient and more obvious results. It also might be interesting to have another prop bet to see which can heats up faster - the one above the burner on low and the one above the burner at max power. It might also be entertaining if watched from a distance and with the proper safety equipment. A third bit of fun could be to superheat the pop cans and quench them in a bucket of ice. The possibilities are endless if you've got a couple idiots willing to carry them out.

If you'll let me get in on the betting, I'd like to wager a significant amount of money on the freezer cooling the pop faster than the refridgerator.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

What was the experiement? Everyone knows hot water freezes faster.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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What was the experiement? Everyone knows hot water freezes faster.

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read my edit. I think he actually may have heard it from a friend and I talking about it. He was really suprised I was against him on this. I got him to break the parameters which allow the Mpemba effect to occur.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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There are many sudies about this and in fact many do show that warmer water DOES in fact freeze faster than colder water SOMETIMES depending on the situations. This is called the Mpemba effect.

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Can you elaborate? Or I guess I could google.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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Its not a question of "is the fridge faster", its "is the freezer noticeably quicker". Since the differance in temperature is around like 17 degrees, it has been argued (normally by the smarter of the two people arguing which is what threw me initially) that the differance is negligable. It has also been claimed ( and i have no idea the truth to this) that the aluminum can limits the speed at which heat can be drawn out, meaning unless the temperature differential was much greater, there would be no differance. As people apparently aren't convinced by "its colder, duh" i was hoping someone knew a more scientiffic/detailed explanation.

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Someone is thinking too much.

This should help.

Does stuff cool faster in the freezer than in the fridge?

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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There are many sudies about this and in fact many do show that warmer water DOES in fact freeze faster than colder water SOMETIMES depending on the situations. This is called the Mpemba effect.

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Can you elaborate? Or I guess I could google.

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Look here

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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Mpemba effect

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That's it - couldn't think of it.

<- now forgotten nearly everything I've learned, and hard-pressed to bet 5 cents water is wet (which it really isn't very, BTW).

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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There are many sudies about this and in fact many do show that warmer water DOES in fact freeze faster than colder water SOMETIMES depending on the situations. This is called the Mpemba effect.

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Can you elaborate? Or I guess I could google.

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Look here

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Yeah I just read that. Interesting.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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What was the experiement? Everyone knows hot water freezes faster.

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I can give some more details... I was very careful in choosing the parameters of the experiment. We used glass bowls so that the heat transfer out was faster. I did this for a specific reason. One of the main reasons the Mpemba effects works so well is due to evaporation (yes water will evaporate in the freezer), the faster you freeze, the less chance for evaporation. If we were to put out water in insulated materials like 2 open thermoses, both waters would take longer to freeze giving the hot water much more time to evaporate and because of the evaporation, there would actually be less mass (water) to freeze from the hot side. I also did not let him get the water boiling, but only close to boiling also due to evaporation. There is also studies that show warm water feezes at higher temps then cold water due to supercooling properties. I'll have to read up more on that before I can elaborate.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

I should add that putting a bottle of beer in liquid nitrogen to cool it down isn't a good method of cooling it. I did this once because I was thirsty, and the beer was warm in the lab. All of the bubbles crashed out and it all went shooting out the top. Good thing I opened it first, otherwise it would have exploded. The more you know...

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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Have one friend jump in a pool of 50-degree water and the other in a pool of 35-degree water and see which gets hypothermia first.

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Didn't the Nazi's already try this?

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

I have always thought the two cans will cool at the same rate, based on thermodynamics, I have not yet found the specific law yet.

However, at some point the can in the freezer will in fact get colder then the one in the fridge because the freezer is coolder.

I think a proper analogy is the rate at which an object falls is the same for all matter and is not based on its mass.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

Nope. Things cool/heat until they become equalized. The rate at which it occurs is decided by the difference between the two and their ability to couple. The first is simple. Think about it this way: if you take your tongue and lick a flagpole in Fargo in February, it'll probably freeze to it. The spit in your mouth/tongue is 98.6 deg, and the pole is something like -25 deg, right?

The second is like heat conductivity; it's why you die faster in cold water than you do standing outside on a cold day. 50 deg water will kill you pretty fast, but 50 deg air won't.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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I believe the freezer is the right choice, but you never know....

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Sometimes you do know.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

um, the freezer is colder than the fridge.

If you put something in the freezer, it will cool faster than if you put it in the fridge.

Duh.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I have always thought the two cans will cool at the same rate, based on thermodynamics, I have not yet found the specific law yet.

However, at some point the can in the freezer will in fact get colder then the one in the fridge because the freezer is coolder.

I think a proper analogy is the rate at which an object falls is the same for all matter and is not based on its mass.

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Wow. Just... wow.

Re: Putting Coke in Freezer to cool faster?
 

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I have always thought the two cans will cool at the same rate, based on thermodynamics, I have not yet found the specific law yet.

However, at some point the can in the freezer will in fact get colder then the one in the fridge because the freezer is coolder.

I think a proper analogy is the rate at which an object falls is the same for all matter and is not based on its mass.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wow. Just... wow.

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I thought I was pretty much a science retard, but Wow. Just... wow.

edit: Can you try to apply some laws of economics to this problem next so I can understand.