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Re: Ice cream sodas



At 04:52 PM 3/5/01 -0700, PETER CRAFT wrote:
summize was that the rapidly melting ice cream my provide sites of
nucleation. We were uncertain about this as we are more familiar with
nucleation as an explanation in the process of boiling.

Why should the physics of nucleation be dissimilar for boiling versus
evolution of CO2?

I thought the physics had to do with surface tension of the liquid-gas
interface, which should be somewhat but not categorically different in the
two cases.

Note that ice cream has huge quantities of entrained air. So to some
extent it will fizz if you put it in warm water. And of course the
resulting rough surface should provide lots of really good sites for
nucleation of the CO2 bubbles.

Wild speculation: Since ice cream is supposed to be a natural product
(although I wonder about some brands) there is some chance that it contains
some enzyme (or something) that catalyzes the evolution of CO2. You can
easily test this by letting some ice cream melt and settle to an air-free
liquid, and see what that does to the soda.