5 Cool Facts About Ice Cream

by Aug 14, 2020Distance Learning, Informational Text, Science Literacy0 comments

Here are 5 Cool Facts About Ice Cream:
1. Long before modern refrigeration and freezers, around 200 BC, the Chinese enjoyed a frozen mixture of milk and rice sweetened with syrup. It was made frozen by pouring snow mixed with an ancient salt over the ingredients. Roman Emperors have been known to have snow retrieved from mountaintops in order to create the finest chilled delicacies. The Ancient Greeks, around the year 400 AD, ate snow mixed with honey and fruit in Athens.
2. Air is a key ingredient in ice cream (and is what makes it a foam). Although it is not listed in the ingredients, air makes up approximately a third to one half of the total volume of ice cream. When the ingredients in ice cream are whipped together, air bubbles get beaten into the mixture. Often in an ice cream maker, a blade will continuously move throughout the mixture to aerate it, or move air through it. You must whip together and freeze the ingredients all at the same time in order to create and suspend the most important ingredient  – air bubbles! Air is what gives ice cream its light. smooth texture. It’s also what escapes as ice cream melts, which is why ice cream shrinks down and is never quite the same after you refreeze it. Ice cream is a foam — a light mass of fine bubbles formed in liquid.
3. Ice cream is an emulsion.  Under normal circumstances, if you simply mixed the ingredients in ice cream together, they would quickly separate apart. The fat globules from the milk would rather stick together than be spread out among ice crystals, air bubbles, sweeteners, and flavorings. To truly make it an emulsion, which is a mixture of liquids in which one liquid is scattered throughout the other but is not dissolved, you can whip up the ingredients to really spread them out and then trap them timelessly by freezing them so they won’t “escape.”
blog picture ice cream cone graphic organizer
4. One key to creating this foamy emulsion – whether in an ice cream maker or in a plastic baggie – is to freeze it quickly. While the ingredients are being whipped together, the liquids will only turn into ice crystals if they are cooled with something that is even colder than ice. That is why rock salt is added to the ice that surrounds the barrel in ice cream machines or in the baggie of ice you can use to make ice cream yourself at home. The ice cream must be frozen quickly so that the liquid ingredients will turn into ice crystals that will “trap” all the other ingredients, including all those air bubbles, in place.
5. The discovery of the freezing-point depression was a real game-changer in the history of ice cream making. Adding salt to ice artificially lowers the freezing point of water. This is called freezing-point depression. The discovery of this principle was a real game-changer in the history of ice cream making. Before this, people had to make do with mixing ingredients with snow and ice to make a chilled delicacy. But once people discovered how to lower the freezing point of liquids (by adding rock salt to ice), they could not only chill their mixture – they could freeze it. And that is how we got ice cream!

But wait, there’s more!


cover ice cream science free lesson

In my FUN-YET-EDUCATIONAL (AND CURRENTLY FREE) reading informational text and tasks lesson gets students to meet several standards for Literacy in Science & Technical Subjects and Writing, plus they have fun learning all about the science behind ice cream and the procedure for making their own ice cream.

In addition to summarizing central ideas, writing to explain the scientific procedure of how ice cream is made, writing a narrative about an ice cream incident, learning scientific vocabulary, citing evidence, getting the recipe for homemade ice cream in a baggie, and even doing a fun Mad Lib activity about ice cream, students fill out a graphic organizer like this in the free lesson:

You might also like these FREE items in the series. They all align to CCRA.R.7 and RST.6-8.7, which requires students to integrate quantitative or technical information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually (such as simulations, diagrams, videos, infographics) and quantitatively (such as tables, graphs, models, diagrams).

And, check out this COOL and FREE logic puzzle! It takes about 15 minutes of critical thinking, so it would be a good bellringer or free-time activity in any subject. For grades 4-9 more or less.

Since teaching ELA for 10 years, I’ve been a contracted learning resource and assessment writer while running my store “Loving Language Arts.” I know how to align to standards like the back of my hand, yet I always aim to make resources high-interest to motivate reluctant readers and writers.

Subscribe

Grade 4 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 5 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 6 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 7 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 8 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 9 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 10 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 11 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 12 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
High School Bundle Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Writing Modules General Promotion Pin

Subscribe

You Know What Else Kids Love?

These workbooks! I made the articles super interesting to kids by writing about things that interest them! AND IT WORKED! I keep hearing from teachers how kids get so into these texts that they actually WANT to answer the questions!

Click below for FREE ELA PRACTICE TESTS – each targeting specific reading, writing, language, and speaking/listening/viewing standards.

Free Upper Elementary Practice Test
Free Middle School Practice Test
Free High School Practice Test
Check out these GRADE-SPECIFIC test prep books with practice tests that target EVERY GRADE-SPECIFIC READING INFORMATIONAL TEXT STANDARD, one by one. An added bonus is that students LOVE the texts! In Easy-Print or Self-Grading Online Versions.
Grade 4 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 10 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 5 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 11 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 6 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 12 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
Grade 7 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
we sail for america by samuel mcclure ela practice test

Try a Freebie!

Grade 8 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
be ready to help passage and ela practice test free

Try a Freebie!

Grade 9 Reading Passages and Practice Tests Workbook - Informational Text Edition
why onions make you cry passage and practice test

Try a Freebie!

The 6th Grade Practice Tests Test Prep Workbook “is a high quality, beautifully-aligned resource. It is no-frills, to the point, yet high-interest for students. It is helping us prepare for standardized testing in a hybrid, synchronous, difficult year.”

ReBeckha L.

Sixth Grade Teacher, Teachers Pay Teachers

Follow Me On Pinterest

How about save this pin to your “Literacy in Science” or “Creative ELA” Board so that you can come back to this post again?

blog header 5 cool facts about ice cream

Related posts:

chameleon color changes science literacy lesson featured imageHow Chameleons Change Colors: An ELA Literacy in Science Lesson blog post about Earth Day in ELAEarth Day in ELA – Ideas for Reading & Writing in April

Powered by YARPP.

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

We'd love it if you subscribe! You'll receive a FREE high-interest informational text once a month (your students will love)!

Join our mailing list to receive a free informational text once a month that you can use in your classroom.

You have Successfully Subscribed!