Ice can get colder than 0C, but I think you are referring to the latent heat of freezing which delays further cooling temporarily and provides additional buffer to the insulating properties of the ice.

i like the laser idea. get one that isn't in the visible spectrum and heat those keys right up!

if anybody wants to see the progress of the melt

http://www.q-music.be/page/q_ijsblok_fotogalerij

36 hours and still a long way to go

although i expect it to accelerate exponentially as the volume decreases
some variables can be excluded, just noticed they did put a tent over it
so rain probably is out of the loop
although wind and temp still is variable, and i would think that sunlight still has some effect, even if indirectly...




last year they had a different setup, with a gold bar in it worth 25000 euro
that one was 30 ton's worth of ice, and took 34 days to melt


and i suspect the ice block is a lot smaller in volume now

30 ton of ice, or 30 ton of water
that's 500x200x300 cm square, or rather a bit more because of ice expansion

a 997 is
L442 cm x W 180cm x H130 cm
from the pictures the base seems to follow the width and length of the car
that makes it around
L450 cm x W 180 cm xH 75CM

squared off it's smaller then last years block
and then you still haven't taken care off the sculpted form of the car, taken out of the car's ice block...

several factors that would make it melt faster then last year
the temperature now is considerably higher then 01/07
there is less ice
it's not a square cube, more surface

i've gone ahead and voted in for 1159670 seconds... or 13 days 10 hours 7 minutes 0 secs

wish me luck :D

2 days.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200098627.jpg


i may be optimistic, but this is 408672 seconds/ 6811 minutes / 113 hours, or 4.75 days into the melt

this thing might actually melt in time for my 1159670 prediction... 750998 secs to go.. i'm more worried about it melting too soon then to late

Is the ice magic or are the strawberries magic? ;)

I can assure you, ice gets colder than 0C.

This is totally awesome. How does one go about placing a guess - or is it too late?

how do you supose they suspended the key in the water while it was freezing? If there a fishing line or something like that holding it that will also effect its drop rate

Good question. I would guess freeze a slab of ice, place the keys on that slab and then freeze the rest on top.

I dunno....just a wild a$$ed guess (WAG)

Do you have to guess the exact time or does the person who gets closest win? No way you can calculate this. The keys will not sink. The car will melt. That depends on the weather, which is not predictable. That said, if the closest guess wins, you should spend some time and find out how long a pile of dense snow usually takes to melt in the climate you have right now. I would try to dig up historical data etc. From the top of my head, I would expect it to take on the order of 6 weeks to melt down. ;)

George

sorry PoP, but unless you have a cell phone with a belgian account... you can't play
they use text messaging for all sorts of games here

the Porsche will be payed by the .40 cts text messages sent by everybody who wants to play


George, no way it will take 6 weeks, last year the block was bigger, it was colder, and it was done in 34 days

close to 1 000 000 seconds now

or about 159670 away from my predicted droptime

135 hours
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200685265.jpg

276 hours ( now)
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200685253.jpg

so that's another 44 hours to go before my prediction is a bust

i've gone and seen it in person
it's realying going fast now, you can see where they joined multiple blocks of ice to make up the block from which they carved the 911 shape
and where those blocks meet, it's going superfast

btw, that's one parameter nobody thought of,
but it seems that 2 blocks 1 cubik meter, joined to form 1 block of 2 cubik meter,
will melt faster then 1 solid block of 2 cubik meter would

i also get the idea that the bottom block is melting faster then the top 911 shape does, i presume that it does so , because of all the melting water that comes down from the top.. .or maybe there's something to do with the ground temp vs air temp... who knows

anyway, in person, it looks a lot smaller then the webcam would make you believe, it's maybe 80cm wide now, not much more

fingers crossed everybody, i could do with a free, brand new 997, because frankly, i don't make nearly enough money to every be able to buy one by the time i saved up the cash, they won't make em anymore ! :D


how sweet it would be, to have that key, drop out of the block from the side, at something like 1159670 seconds...
just a little sound, of plastic and metal on stone... *plink*

Bunch of years back a NYC radio station was giving away a 944 every week.

They'd play a song montage and if you were caller 10 and had the songs/artist correct you were in the running for the week.

Every weekend the entrants would go to a Mall and pick a key out of a fishbowl, the key that started it got you the car.

I got into the running but could not claim it as I did not have a valid license, long story. So I made a deal with my boss, he claims it and we split it. He was driving a DeLorean and wanted a 308. He would sell the 944 for the down on the 308 and i kept the Delorean.

Anyway we get there and wait our turn to pick the key. I pull one out of the bowl and take one look at it. It was a blank with a couple of quick notches filed into it, obvious it would not start even a lawn mower.

Someone in the line before us picked the correct key so we were spared the pain of attempting to start it.

A bunch of us "contestants" hit the bar and had a good time consoling each other and getting downright pissed.

The girl who won it came in and everyone threw money on the bar to buy her some drinks.

Turns out she had been unemployed for a bit, had racked up some bills, needed a few thousand dollars in dental work done urgently and had just landed a job the day before but had no car and no reasonable way to get to work.

On the hopes that she would win she had made a deal with a local car dealership to take the car at a reduced value. In return she got a brand new car, basic no frills transportation, and enough cash to get her out of debt and also pay for her dental work.

The rest of us "losers" unanimously agreed that the right person won that day.

34 days are 5 weeks, by the way, so I am pretty close with my coarse guess from 3000 miles away.

You didn't mention it was in a tent.

George

you're pretty close on last years iceblock which was bigger, and at a colder temperature...


i guess the tent is to slow it down, rain can't touch it, no direct sunlight

How many hot chicks standing around the slab of ice?
Take that number and
multiple it by the number of healthy men in the area
divide by the number of men standing next to their wives
which is later multiplide by the number of number of men who are married and haven't gotten any
this total is now divided by the cost of the car.

Or take the easy way out and ask a cute girl when her birthday is and what time she was born.
so month + date = number of days from start and the birth time should put you in nanoseconds ...

Geez, simple elementary math will go a long way these days :)


interpolaratic expotentional lazer baiting pediazombic numbers reduced from the calculations used in basic quatum physics gets so hairy at times. Plus they are cheating by using a tent. So, go put the Clay back in the corner of that huge 30,000ft computer lab room. They have already figured some astro-physists would have already calculated it out spoiling all the fun for the non-geeks!

it's at 1132366 secs
7.5 hours left on my prediction

it's like 12-13 degrees C out there, weather man mentioned an all time high record for this time of year...

that block is getting pretty thin now, i'm kind hoping that the bottom block will get to weak to support the top part, and the top one will fall/slide off and shatter

not implausible if you look at it
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200821815.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1200958521.jpg


so i went bust on my first prediction
made a second one, and it looks like a close call
the key was visible this afternoon, just a mm or 2 from the surface
radio announced that it's on top now, loose

crowd is building, officials are there, can happen any minute now
it's 00h36, my time was 1h16 ish

damn this is exiting stuff

my nephew is a student not far from there, told him to start drinking coffee so he can make a last ditch effort an start pissing on it at 1h16, 5 secs

C'mon Stijn!

i'm defrosting my freezer just to like get a feel for things