What are the differences between rock salt, treated salt, and salt brine? How is one selected to remove snow/ice?

I saw on TV some interesting way to prevent car windows from icing up. So, the night before a big freeze, you take half a potato or half an onion, and you rub it on the windows and windshield. This will prevent frost from forming on the glass. So, here is the question: why does it work?

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the blog! As you know this project includes students from Chemistry, English and Mathematics. We would like to get to know who is here. Please, comment below, and tell us which course you are enrolled in, and also tell us a little bit about yourself.

We are looking forward to hearing and learning from you.

Have a great semester!

Profs. Medialdea (Chemistry), Devers (English), Benakli (Mathematics)

I heard a news story recently about beet juice being used to de-ice roads.  Check out this alternative to the chemicals we use now.  What do you think?

http://beetjuicesalt.com/

So it’s that cold time of year when we should expect a bit of travel disruption and shouldn’t leave the house without hat, gloves and scarves. And as it’s the first time I’ve had to scrape ice off my car in the morning I thought it was about time I turned the snow machine on and let chemstuff.co.uk be a little festive!

It’s also a good excuse to look at the chemistry of snow

Snow is of course formed in clouds where the temperature is less that 0oC (or 273K) this means that the water vapour present will start to crystallise and form a snowflake. Crystals are structures with a very high level of order and we can see this when we look at a snowflake in a lot of detail. Whilst they are not always absolutely symmetrical, snowflakes do follow similar patterns. This is because a snowflake’s shape reflects the internal order of the water molecules. Water molecules in the solid state, such as in ice and snow, form weak bonds (called hydrogen bonds) with one another. These ordered arrangements result in the symmetrical, hexagonal shape of the snowflake. During crystallization, the water molecules align themselves to maximize attractive forces and minimize repulsive forces. Consequently, water molecules arrange themselves in predetermined spaces and in a specific arrangement. Water molecules simply arrange themselves to fit the spaces and maintain symmetry.

As we know water and ice often appear clear and colourless but snow appears to be white, this is because snowflakes have so many surfaces, owing to its crystal structure, that reflect light and scatters most of the rays that hit it.

So whether we have a white christmas this year, or not. If you see a snowflake, why not start to appreciate some of the chemistry behind it!

What do you guys think about this imagine? It’s simply awesome, but at the same time scary. So is kind of the same image that we would see if that happen to our son, but bigger.

— https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2017/hubble-captures-brilliant-star-death-in-rotten-egg-nebula

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