Near our office we have a little pharmacy/inconvenience storein which they sell soda (Mt. Dew specifically) in the all important 1 liter size; however, the coolers, in an effort to save electricity, only cool to about 55° F. As this is obviously too warm for consumption, I was wondering if any heat transfer guru’s out there could tell me how long it will take in our lunch room freezer to reach the required 36°-38° F. Assume 4° F in the freezer compartment. Thanks in advance for the help.
Experiment, I “cook” my pints of Grolsch beer by placing them in the freezer for 45 minutes (USE A TIMER!!!), when I pull out a Grolsch I know it’s “cooked” if the neck freezes up when I open it (ice cold Grolsch is a wonderful thing). WARNING freezing liquids makes them expand, DO NOT LEAVE THE BOTTLE IN THE FREEZER FOR TOO LONG!!!
Unclviny
I do the same thing with half-litre cans of DAB - 45 mins seems about right.
Good advice that I found out the hard way a dozen times or so: put your drink in a closed plastic bag. That way if you forget about it and it explodes, you don’t have a whole freezer to clean out.
This doesn’t really address the question, but if you put the cans or bottles in a plastic bag before you put them in the freezer, at least they don’t make so much mess if they do explode.
Let me apologize in advance for the nit pick, but I think it is important for peeps to understand that MOST liquids do NOT expand when they become solid. Water is one of the few that do (the only one?) It begins to expand at 4° C (41° F) due to the breaking down of its intermolecular hydrogen bonding.
It’s also important to note that a soda will not freeze at 0° C due to its colligative properties. Colligative properties affect boiling point elevation and freezing point depression and deal with the number of molecules dissolved in a liquid. More particles = higher boiling point and lower freezing point. This is the principle on which antifreeze is based.
Finally, when CO2, carbonation, is dissolved in water, it forms carbonic acid which is H2CO3.
That’s all the chemistry lesson for today.
Yes, but soda and beer will freeze in the freezer. I also like to have my beer very cold, so I “prime” (i.e. “cook”) my beer in the freezer for about 15 minutes (after being in the fridge) before drinking. If the beer was warm when I bought it, it will take a couple hours. For 55 degrees, I’d second the 45 minute approximations.
Somebody local to me several years ago patented a little contraption they called a “Chill Wizard”, which was a little motor with a suction cup on the end and a trough it fit down into that you filled with ice. Stick the motor onto the end of a canned beverage, lay it in the ice-filled trough, and let it spin away. Room temperature to nearly slushed soda in about 90 seconds.
The only problem was that the motor was cheap and didn’t work very well for very long. Had they made it a hand crank with a really good gear ratio, they’d have had something.
Lesson learned, though: spinning a can of something against ice will chill it down really fast. I’ve spun cans against the ice in the freezer before when I needed something cold to drink in a hurry. It takes a few minutes, but nowhere near 45; and if you’re careful to spin and not jostle, there is no carbonated explosion waiting for you when you’re done.
Nitpick not, lest you be nitpicked. If by “most different kinds of liquids which exist or can potentially exist in the Universe”, then you’re right, but if you mean “most liquid” by volume or mass, then I suspect you’ll find that there’s an awful lot of water lying around, compared to other liquids. And if one means “most liquids which a person is likely to encounter day-to-day”, by either standard of “most”, then most of them are water, with varying impurities, and will expand on freezing.
Corollary: You can bring a 12 ounce can of room temperature pop to ideal serving temprature in 40 minutes if you sit it in a freezer atop the ice in the ice maker hopper. Probably faster if it’s surrounded but I never tried it.
Dijon Warlock, if you have access to dry ice and you want to have fun, try spinning a can of pop or beer against that. Some grad students in my department were doing that a while back. When the can stops screaming, it’s cold enough. You may want to try it in a fairly open area though, the sound the can makes is LOUD.
Put the bottle in the fridge until it explodes. Next time, dont put it in as long.