The Effect of pH on the Melting Time of Ice

Abstract

The melting point of ice is known to be affected by the presence of impurities. Research has demonstrated that salt can speed up the melting of ice (Kim and Yethiraj 1). However, there is not a lot of research available on the effects of pH on the melting point of ice. If low pH is shown to accelerate the melting of ice, it can have implications for the melting of glaciers as ocean acidification intensifies globally. In order to evaluate if lower pH ice cubes melt faster, acidic, basic, and neutral ice cubes were used to record melting time. The time it took for the ice to display the first signs of melting was measured simultaneously for the three types of ice cubes and a one-way ANOVA was run using the data collected. We predicted that acidic ice would melt faster than basic or neutral ice and that neutral ice would melt the slowest. The ANOVA found no significant difference (p-value = 0.744) in the melting time of the acidic ice compared to the neutral or basic ice. Therefore, whether acidic melts faster than basic or neutral ice could not be concluded and the null hypothesis was not rejected.