Questions about hot ice experiment?

Try This dear.....

Prepare the Sodium Acetate or Hot Ice

1.In a saucepan or large beaker, add baking soda to the vinegar, a little at a time and stirring between additions. The baking soda and vinegar react to form sodium acetate and carbon dioxide gas. If you don't add the baking soda slowly, you'll essentially get a baking soda and vinegar volcano, which would overflow your container. You've made the sodium acetate, but it is too dilute to be very useful, so you need to remove most of the water.

Here is the reaction between the baking soda and vinegar to produce the sodium acetate:

Na+[HCO3]– + CH3–COOH → CH3–COO– Na+ + H2O + CO2

2.Boil the solution to concentrate the sodium acetate. You could just remove the solution from heat once you have 100-150 ml of solution remaining, but the easiest way to get good results is to simply boil the solution until a crystal skin or film starts to form on the surface. This took me about an hour on the stove over medium heat. If you use lower heat you are less likely to get yellow or brown liguid, but it will take longer. If discoloration occurs, it's okay.

3.Once you remove the sodium acetate solution from heat, immediately cover it to prevent any further evaporation. I poured my solution into a separate container and covered it with plastic wrap. You should not have any crystals in your solution. If you do have crystals, stir a very small amount of water or vinegar into the solution, just sufficient to dissolve the crystals.

4.Place the covered container of sodium acetate solution in the refrigerator to chill.

Activities Involving Hot Ice

The sodium acetate in the solution in the refrigerator is an example of a supercooled liquid. That is, the sodium acetate exists in liquid form below its usual melting point. You can initiate crystallization by adding a small crystal of sodium acetate or possibly even by touching the surface of the sodium acetate solution with a spoon or finger. The crystallization is an example of an exothermic process. Heat is released as the 'ice' forms. To demonstrate supercooling, crystallization, and heat release you could:

•Drop a crystal into the container of cooled sodium acetate solution. The sodium acetate will crystallize within seconds, working outward from where you added the crystal. The crystal acts as a nucleation site or seed for rapid crystal growth. Although the solution just came out of the refrigerator, if you touch the container you will find it is now warm or hot.

•Pour the solution onto a shallow dish. If the hot ice does not spontaneously begin crystallization, you can touch it with a crystal of sodium acetate (you can usually scrape a small amount of sodium acetate from the side of the container you used earlier). The crystallization will progress from the dish up toward where you are pouring the liquid. You can construct towers of hot ice. The towers will be warm to the touch.

•You can re-melt sodium acetate and re-use it for demonstrations.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can make hot ice yourself from baking soda and clear vinegar. I've got written instructions and a video tutorial to show you how to do it.

In the lab, you could make hot ice from sodium bicarbonate and weak acetic acid (1 L 6% acetic acid, 84 grams sodium bicarbonate) or from acetic acid and sodium hydroxide (dangerous! 60 ml water, 60 ml glacial acetic acid, 40 g sodium hydroxide). The mixture is boiled down and prepared the same as the homemade version.

You can also buy sodium acetate (or sodium acetate anhydrous) and sodium acetate trihydrate. Sodium acetate trihydrate can be melted and used as-is. Convert sodium acetate anhydrous to sodium acetate trihydrate by dissolving it in water and cooking it down to remove the excess water.