freezing milk in a bag with magic

                                                                                tyler bigelow

STUFF

a big bag

a small bag

1 cuppa milk

half of half a cuppa sugar

a really tiny bit of vanilla (seriously, be careful with this stuff)

some salt, ideally of the rock variety

now put a bunch of ice in the big bag and everything else except the salt in the little bag 

seal the little bag 'till it's good and sealed and put it in the big bag with the salt 

seal up the big one and shake things up

a flower-print oven mitt a day keeps the frostbite away 

do other things for about ten minutes while the little bag chills out, but keep mashing it 

 unless you spring a leak, in which case you go where there's no carpet or exposed electronics

after like ten minutes of tossing, squishing, kneading and shaking, i'm just about ready to call it a day 

 it looks like waterlogged sawdust



here goes nothing

it didn't kill me, but i don't feel any stronger either

all dead, and for what?

it tasted like waterlogged sawdust too









EXPLANATION

This doesn't actually happen by magic, if you hadn't already guessed. The ice in the bag is doing its best to reach thermal equilibrium by taking heat energy from its surroundings, in this case a bag full of milk and sugar. Adding salt to the ice brings down its melting point because the salt dissolves in the water, and solutions typically have lower freezing/melting points than their solvents alone. The ice therefore requires even more energy from the mixture in order to melt, and as it does so the ice draws enough from the milk to freeze it into "delicious," "nutrious" "ice cream."