Problem 1E Alcohol evaporates more quickly than water at the same temperature. Which produces more cooling—alcohol or the same amount of water on your skin?
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Textbook Solutions for Conceptual Physics
Question
Problem 6P
If you drop a piece of ice on a hard surface, the energy of impact will melt some of the ice. The higher it drops, the more ice will melt upon impact. Show that to completely melt a block of ice that falls without air drag, it should ideally be dropped from a height of 34 km. [Hint: Equate the joules of gravitational potential energy to the product of the mass of ice and its heat of fusion (in SI units, 335,000 J/kg). Do you see why the answer doesn’t depend on mass?]
Solution
Solution 6E
Introduction
If ice is at a height, it will have some potential energy. If we drop the ice, the potential energy will be converted to the latent heat of the ice and melt the ice.
Now by equating the potential energy and the latent heat of fusion, we can calculate the required height.
Solution
Step 1
Let us consider the mass of the ice is .
Let us also consider that the height through which we have to drop the ice is .
So the potential energy of the ice is .
Where is the acceleration due to gravity and is given by
.
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