Yan & Lam, 1

How do adding substances affect the freezing point of water?

Ray Yan & Vy Lam
Mrs. Wagner
26 January 2015

Yan & Lam, 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract...................................................................................3
Question.................................................................................4
Variables.................................................................................4
Hypothesis..............................................................................4
Background Research.............................................................5
Material Lists..........................................................................7
Experimental Procedure.........................................................8
Data Analysis and Discussion................................................9
Conclusion............................................................................10
Acknowledgements..............................................................10
Works Cited..........................................................................11

Yan & Lam, 3

ABSTRACT
Nowadays, ice cream is popular in our life. Most children like ice cream and a lot of
adults like ice cream, too. And the good thing is that ice cream is good for people to keep their
health and happiness. Since we were children, ice cream was common in that time. For the first
time, chemistry teacher asked us to do science fair project. We finally decided our project to be
making ice cream after a long time of choosing the project topic. We have never ever made ice
cream before. That's why when we saw the ice cream making topic at the first time, we were
totally interested in it. For making ice cream, we need to prepare materials such as salt, sugar,
vanilla, ice, milk, etc. After that, we made a hypothesis and listed some questions for ourselves
about how to make ice cream. That's much better for us to start the first experience than to be
unprepared to do the experience. During our experiments, we found out the most important thing
was getting the mixture cold enough to freeze. As a result, we began to add more ice into the ice
bath to make sure it's cold enough for the ice cream mixture to freeze. By doing our experiments,
we found out that salt serves as a better substance for lowering freezing point of water than
sugar, and our results do support our hypothesis. In the end, we did totally six experiments; even
though they were not succeeded. In our opinion, the experiments would succeed if we extended
the time of doing the experiments (i.e. 15 minutes extended to 20 or 30 minutes). However, we
really enjoyed when doing this ice cream making project. We have learnt a lot since we were

Yan & Lam, 4

doing the project, such as how to make ice cream or how the freezing point be affected by
substances.

QUESTION
Which substance lower the freezing point of water better, sugar or salt?

VARIABLES
Independent Variable: amount of salt, amount of sugar.
Dependent Variable: freezing point of water.
Controlled Variables: the amount of water, the amount of ice, time in ice cream maker,
temperature of ingredients.

HYPOTHESIS
Salt will serve as a better substance for lowering freezing point of water than sugar.

Yan & Lam, 5

BACKGROUND RESEARCH

The Freezing Point of Water

The origin of ice cream started from the literature of the early fourth century B.C. At that
time, the emperor Nero of Rome ordered the ice to be combined with fruit snacks. During the
Tang Dynasty, Chinese made a mixture of ice, milk and other materials, that mixture was called
ice cream. Ice cream was then brought back to Europe from China where these ice creams were
imported to the United States, they became popular immediately. However, we are not merely
talking about ice cream, but the discovery of how ice cream is made.
Lowering the freezing point is the most important factor in this experiment. Salt and
sugar are really good substances that help lowering the freezing point of water. However, we still
need to keep track on the temperature of the ice, which is put around the ice cream, for the
experiment to be successful.
To make ice cream freeze, you have to use water as the solvent, and table salt and sugar
as the solutes. Salt or sugar can drop the temperature: if you sprinkle a little bit of salt (or sugar)
on the ice, it would freeze at a lower temperature and make ice cream freezes. Even though
adding salt or sugar lowers the freezing point, making ice cream freezing is not that easy: "When
you are making ice cream, the temperature around the ice cream mixture needs to be lower than
32 F if you want the mixture to freeze. Salt mixed with ice creates a brine that has a temperature

Yan & Lam, 6

lower than 32F." (Why do they use salt to melt ice on the road in the winter?, 1). If we lower the
melting point of the ice down below 32 degree Fahrenheit by adding salt/sugar into it, the salt or
sugar solutions are cold enough to easily freeze the ice cream mixture. The ice cream freezing
reaction above relates to the definition of The Equilibrium Law, that: "When a system at
equilibrium is subjected to change in concentration, temperature, volume, or pressure, then the
system readjusts itself to (partially) counteract the effect of the applied change and a new
equilibrium is established." (Le Chatelier's Principle., 1). When salt or sugar is added ice,
basically, the ice absorbs energy to melt in a lower temperature than normal and then releases the
energy when it freezes. Moreover, the ice cream mixture releases energy to get to the fixed
freezing point of ice cream to be frozen.
In our project, the independent variables are the amount of sugar and salt, and the
dependent variable is the freezing point of the sugar and salt solutions. The procedure can be
generally described as these steps, respectively: putting ices around the ice cream mixture
container, putting different amounts of salts/sugars onto the ices, the salt/sugar makes the ices
melt at a lower temperature, ice cream gradually freezes as it releases energy to the melting ices.
To be easy to compare and contrast, some formulas are used to determine whether sugar
or salt has more effect on the freezing point of water. We could compare the result by calculating
the freezing point of sugar/salt solutions. For example, the freezing point of the solutions ("Tn,"
in degree Celsius) equal the freezing point of the pure solvent ("Tf," in degree Celsius) minus the
freezing point depression ("T," in degree Celsius). Before we could get the result of the
freezing point depression, we have to have the molality of the solute result which presents in the
following equation: moles of solute (mol) divided by the kilograms of solute (kg). We then need
to find out the freezing point depression to calculate the freezing point of each sugar and salt

Yan & Lam, 7

solutions: T=iKfm, in which the van't Hoff factor ("i", in which we know that is 2 for table salt
and 1 for sugar), and the molal freezing-point-depression constant ("Kf", it is equals to 1.86 C/m
for pure water) multiply by the molality that we just found out.
We already knew that salt and sugar decrease the freezing point of water, however, salt
solution has a lower freezing point than the sugar solution because there are more particles in salt
composition than in the sugar.

MATERIAL LISTS

- Test Tubes
- Gram Balance
- 100ml Graduated Cylinder
- Stir Rods
- Thermometer
- Cups
- Crushed Ice
- Salt
- Sugar
- Milk
- Vanilla Flavor
- Spoon
- Water

Yan & Lam, 8

EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
1. Put 100ml of water and 100g of crushed ice together in a cup to form an ice-bath.
2. Preparing the ice cream mixture: 75ml milk, 0.5 teaspoon vanilla, 3 teaspoons of sugar,
stirring the mixture, pouring the ice cream mixture into a test tube.
3. Turn on the thermometer, setting up for 900 seconds (equals 15 minutes).
4. Measuring the salt and sugar for each experiment.
5. Using the ring stand to hold the ice cream mixture test tube.
6. Putting the ice cream mixture into the ice-bath. Start timing the thermometer.
7. Using spoon to stir around the ice-bath. Putting the appropriate amount of salt/sugar into the
ice-bath. Continuing stirring.
8. If the ice in the ice-bath melted, we would put more ice to maintain the temperature for the
ice-bath.
9. Stirring until the thermometer ends recording the temperature.
10. Record the result shows on the thermometer into the lab notebook.

Yan & Lam, 9

DATA ANALYSIS & GRAPH

CONCLUSIONS
Our hypothesis is salt will serve as a better substance for lowering freezing point of water than
sugar. Our results does support our hypothesis.
We initially chose this experiment from Science Buddies website with the title as "Chemistry of
Ice-Cream Making: Lowering the Freezing Point of Water". However, during the time we
constructed the experiment, we figured out that the experimental procedure of the experiment
above is too hard to understand and to follow. Eventually, we decided to do this experiment with
a different procedure and did not follow the procedure of the experiment on Science Buddies
website. Also, we keep the background research follows the Science Buddies procedure because
it happened before we constructing the new experiment. That's why some of the information in
this final report do not match with the lab notebook.
According to our result, the temperature of the ice cream mixture gets lower when adding salt
rather than sugar.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank Mrs. Wagner and Mr. Parmar for letting us use the laboratory to do and

Yan & Lam, 10

helped us to understand the concept of this experiment.

WORKS CITED
Bosma, Wayne B. Colligative properties. Chemistry Explained. Chemistry Explained, n.d.
Web. 23 Oct. 2014.
"Le Chatelier's Principle." Wikipedia. Wikipedia, n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2014
Science Buddies Staff. Chemistry of Ice-Cream Making: Lowering the Freezing Point of Water
Science Buddies. Science Buddies, 12 Sep. 2014. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.
"The History of Ice Cream." International Dairy Food Association. International Dairy Food
Association, n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2014
The effect of salt and sugar on the freezing point of water. All Science Fair Project.
vBulentine Solutions, Inc. n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.
Why do they use salt to melt ice on the road in the winter? How Stuff Works. How Stuff
Works, 02 April 2009. 24 Oct. 2014.
Why does salt melt ice? General Chemistry Online! Fred Sense, 15 Feb. 2010. Web. 23 Oct.
2014.
"Why does ice water get colder when salt is added?" Chemistry Beta. StackExchange, 2 Aug.
2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2014.

Yan & Lam, 11

Experiment #

Amount of salt
20g

30g

5
6

-2.4 Celsius
degree
-6.5 Celsius
degree

30g

Final Temperature
-5 Celsius degree

20g

2
3

Amount of sugar

40g

-1.0 Celsius
degree
-5.7 Celsius
degree

40g

-1.1 Celsius
degree

Yan & Lam, 12