Make Your Own Ice Cream

Did you know that you could turn milk (plus a few other ingredients) into ice cream because of the amazing abilities of sodium chloride, also known as salt? Sodium chloride lowers water’s freezing point.  So how can you use this property to make your own ice cream?  I’ll explain after we go over the materials and procedure for this delicious experiment!

What you will need:

½ cup milk

½ cup heavy cream

¼ cup of sugar

¼ teaspoon of vanilla extract

½ cup of salt

2 cups of ice

1-quart baggie

1-gallon baggie

Thermometer

Measuring cups

Spoons

Procedure:

Add all ingredients except ice and salt into the quart size baggie.

Put the ice into the gallon size baggie.

Record the temperature in the gallon size baggie using the thermometer.

Add ½ cup of salt to the gallon size baggie.

Place the sealed quart size bag into the gallon baggie and seal.

Shake the bag holding it at the edge for about 10 minutes.

Open the bag, and measure the temperature inside the gallon size bag, and enjoy your homemade treat!

  

When you measured the temperature for the second time, the time when there was salt, did you notice how much colder it was than your initial reading? Did you notice the ice melted? This is because salt lowers the freezing point of water. The ice also absorbed energy from the ingredients and from the shaking so it changed states from a solid to a liquid.  So why did this make the milk turn into ice cream?  Well as the milk got colder from its surroundings getting colder, it expanded.  The molecules slowed down and froze making you ice cream!