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Science Experiment – Ice Cream

Making Ice Cream

Let’s use some of our knowledge about freezing to make a quick and delicious treat!

Materials

• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup cream
• Flavoured topping (we recommend chocolate!)
• 2 medium-sized strong zip-loc bags
• 1 large plastic freezer bag or zip-loc bag
• 1/2 cup of salt
• 1/2 cup of crushed ice
• A hand towel
• A mixing bowl and spoon

Steps

1. Mix the milk, cream and topping of your choice in the mixing bowl until all combined.
2. Pour it into one of the medium-sized zip-loc bags. As you seal it, try and get as much air out of the bag as possible.
3. Put that zip-loc bag inside the other medium-sized one – to protect your ice-cream in case the bag rips!
4. Mix your salt and crushed ice together.
5. Place your sealed ice-cream bags inside the large zip-loc bag, and surround it with the crushed ice and salt mixture. As you seal the large zip-loc bag, make sure you get as much air out as possible.
6. Holding the bag with the hand towel, gently massage the ice-mixture so that it surrounds the inner ice cream bag. This helps with cooling!
7. After ten-fifteen minutes of gently shaking or massaging the bag, your ice-cream should be ready!

There’s some really cool science at work here (excuse the pun). Salt lowers the freezing temperature of water, so it’s colder than if we had just used water. This means that outside mixture is cold enough to freeze and harden the ingredients on the inside, creating ice cream!

Do you want to keep learning? Find more experiments here!

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