Top 4 Questions You Never Knew You Wanted to Ask

Welcome to the latest Science for Writers post. Last time we discussed the Nobel Prize winners in Peace and Economic Sciences. In this post I will be doing a quick fire of the top 4 questions you never knew you wanted to ask. The questions are a mix of those you thought too obvious to even contemplate asking and those that just weren't even on your radar.

I have put important words in bold. These words are important in science and I will refer to them throughout the post. It isn't overly important for you to know the exact meaning, so long as you get the gist of what I'm talking about you will be fine following this post.

Writing Links are in italics and these discuss how the science could be used in writing.

Why Does Salt + Water = Pain?

In this video we see a bunch of idiots doing the Salt and Ice Challenge. Before I even go into the science of this I think I should take a moment and say not to try this at home, though I doubt you'll want to after reading the background to this challenge.

Let's think a bit about what they're actually doing here. They pour salt onto their hands, add an ice cube, and squeeze; seems harmless enough. But then they start crying out in pain and laughter. The laughter is likely because they don't want to cry in front of their friends, but the pain ... the pain is definitely real. To give them credit, they lasted longer than some other people on YouTube doing this challenge have.

So, why does squeezing salt and ice cause pain? Well it's to do with the type of reaction happening. In this case it is an endothermic reaction. That means it takes energy in from its surroundings, which in this challenge in the person's warm hand. The salt wants to react with the water in the ice. When it does the ice will melt at a colder temperature. This is why we grit roads with ice in the winter; the ice will melt despite the colder temperature. But doing that means it draws energy from your hand, much more than just normal ice would.

But why does it burn if it's getting colder? Those burns are frostbite. When you do this challenge you give yourself second degree (and sometimes third) frostbite burns that take weeks to heal and can leave a permanent scar.