A physics question about melting ice in a cup

[YamatoTwinkie]

I thought I’d like to previous discussion on this subject:

How To Keep My Cooler Longer?

If you’re talking about getting warm (or room temperature) stuff cold, you want ice + water (if you add salt it’ll get colder faster), but if your beers are already cold you don’t need (or want) to transfer heat faster, you want to prevent the transfer of heat. My impression of the original post was that we’re adding new ice to a cooler in which the old ice has melted, and the beers are already cold. The key to keeping stuff cold, and making the ice last longest, is to get rid of the melt wate…

Keeping beer cold.

If you can remove the water and replace it with COLD air, than yes, draining the water is a good idea. If you are replacing the water with WARM outside air, it’s better to leave the water in place.

Ice Cooler Performance

Will an ice cooler (standard Igloo/Rubbermaid type plastic ice cooler with lid) perform better over time on a hot summer day if you periodically drain the water from melted ice? I say keep the water in there, since when you drain the ~32 degree water you are effectively replacing that volume with ambient air and thus accelerating the melting of more ice. My brother-in-law insists the cooler will last longer (keep the beer colder longer) if you drain the water. He cites the second law of therm…

Adding ice to an ice chest

Given an ice chest containing ice and water (the water being ice that has melted), is it better to empty the water (in the ice chest) before adding more ice? Or just add the ice without emptying? This issue has been hotly debated around our campsite. My friends say, “the water is 32 degrees, don’t throw it out”. But I am thinking if it is 32 degrees then why isn’t it frozen? Please help settle this.