Question

You get to the drink stand, and you are feeling really hot. You order extra ice in your lemonade. When you hold the cup of lemonade, your hand quickly feels cold. Use the second law of thermodynamics to describe why your hand will feel colder when you hold the lemonade.

Answer 1

Your hand feels colder when holding a cup of lemonade with extra ice because the ice absorbs heat from your hand until thermal equilibrium is achieved, according to the second law of thermodynamics. This endothermic process results in the melting of the ice and a cooling sensation.

Step-by-step explanation:

When you hold a cup of extra ice lemonade, your hand feels colder due to principles explained by the second law of thermodynamics. According to this law, heat transfer occurs from warmer objects to cooler ones until thermal equilibrium is reached. The ice in your lemonade absorbs heat from your hand, which is warmer, resulting in the melting of the ice and the cooling sensation in your hand. Entropy, or the disorder in the system, increases during this process as heat is transferred.

The process is endothermic, meaning that heat is absorbed by the system (the ice) from its surroundings (your hand). This is represented by the thermochemical equation: heat + H₂O(s) → H₂O(l), where 's' represents solid (ice) and 'l' represents liquid (water).