Question

During summers in india, one of the common practice to keep cool is to make ice balls of crushed ice, dip it in flavoured suger syrup and sip it. For this a stick is inserted into crushed ice and is squeezed in the palm to make it into the ball. Equivalently in winter in thouse ares where it snows, people make snow balls and throw around. Explain the formation of ball out of crushed ise or snow in the light of P - T diagram of water.

Answer 1

P - T diagram of water is shown

From P - T diagram at the location of double arrow, we note that, at solid state ice, if we increase pressure at `0^@C` and 1 atmosphere, it take ice into liquid state (i.e. water) and if we decrease pressure into liquid state (i.e. water) at `0^@C` and 1 atmosphere, it takes water into ice (i.e. solid state). When crushed ice is squeezed, some of the ice melts due to increase in pressure, which fills up the gaps between the ice flakes. On releasing prerssure, then water in gaps freezes which binds all ice flakes making the ice ball quite stable.