google failed me. It has been years since I took chem. On a

>>8598915
it evaporates quickly

>>8598915
It lowers the freezing point, and has poorer hydrogen bonding than water does.

>>8598915

Interesting question.
Quick googling didn't give satisfactory answer.
Naive guess would be the alcohol acts as a solvent, and the final solution has lower freezing point.

>>8598927
How does it lower the freezing point? by adding energy to the electrons of h20?

>>8598939
When you remove energy from the system the molecules slow down (remember they vibrate at all times except at 0K), when they slow down intermolecular powers take over (hydrogen bonding). The electrons on oxygen in ethanol will interfere with the hydrogen bonds between water molecules. Thus lowering the freezing point.

>Why wouldn't water and ethanol not just make hydrogen bonds and the result be the same?

They do but not as orderly as a pure solution

File: EtOH graph.jpg (104KB, 1600x991px) Image search: [Google]

104KB, 1600x991px

Engineer here, we use ethanol to lower the freezing point of coolant in situations where a glycol leak would damage the environment.

When you add alcohol to water, the freezing point is lowered below the ambient temperature. Although the melting of the ice cools the mixture down a bit it's not by as much as the melting point is lowered. This causes the ice to melt, defrosting the window.

This is safer than pouring boiling water on your window, which may crack it because the temperature change is much smaller.

>>8598971

I don't know any chemistry.
I get that alcohol has lower freezing point than water, and the mixture of both would have a freezing point somewhere in between.

But how does the alcohol solution, say rubbing alcohol, interact with the ice? Won't it only affect the outermost ice layer?

>>8598988
>But how does the alcohol solution, say rubbing alcohol, interact with the ice? Won't it only affect the outermost ice layer?

That soon melts and, because they're highly miscible, draws the alcohol towards the newly exposed ice. Also, the frost on your window has a very high surface area to volume ratio.

>>8598950
>>8598971

got it, I figured it was something like that. Thanks bois