Ten Easy Life Hacks In Less Than Two Minutes

13 responses to “Ten Easy Life Hacks In Less Than Two Minutes”

1. 

   Beware

   August 11, 2012

   If you do the toaster trick with a plastic toaster, the rising heat will melt it ruining your meal and toaster.

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   1. 

      Peter

      August 11, 2012

      Plus when your meal is done you can pick it up from the floor…

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2. 

   Bangers

   August 11, 2012

   I’m pretty sure that hot water freezing faster than cold water was debunked. Not sure about he clarity though.

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   1. 

      Timmahh

      August 11, 2012

      I’m thinking that’s a load too…
      Plus putting a wooden spoon on a pot to stop it boiling over is kinda dumb too, you should put a lid on it in the first place to make it boil faster.

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   2. 

      musashi

      August 11, 2012

      Its true the temperature differential is greater so it starts of at a higher rate of cooling and keeps cooling at the higher rate

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      1. 

         Bangers

         August 11, 2012

         Yeah, the Mpemba effect. It can happen, in some circumstances, but in an ice-tray in a freezer the hot water will not freeze faster.

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      2. 

         Shamzaa

         August 13, 2012

         I personally use the wooden spoon to stop stuff from boiling over on a pot and it works fine for me.

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   3. 

      NegativeZero

      August 12, 2012

      It does freeze faster up to a certain point. It’s Newton’s Law of Cooling. The rate of cooling is proportional to the difference between the temperature of the object and the ambient temperature. In the case of room temperature water (around 20 degrees) and boiling (around 100) both going into a freezer which is ideally -18 degrees, the difference in temperature is quite significant. I wouldn’t be surprised if you ran the equations and found that the boiling water hits cooler temperatures faster and thus hits the freezing point faster as well, though I doubt there will be a massive difference between them.

      As for making clear ice, boiling isn’t going to do much. You have to start with distilled water. The cloudy parts in ice cubes are caused mainly by minerals from the water which even filtering won’t remove all of, and also air in the water. Boiling will remove most of the air, but the minerals will still be in solution and cause the result to have cloudy patches.

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3. 

   Nick

   August 11, 2012

   I don’t think it keeps cooling at the higher rate… I imagine if an experiment was done where a container was placed in a freezer (controlled) at, say, 50 degrees C, and another was added when the first was at 20 degrees C (assuming the second container was also at 20C) then you might notice a quicker cooling in the first container. This would seem to prove that hypothesis, BUT consider that the containers the water has been placed in, even if they are the same material, the one in the freezer COULD be colder than the one outside the freezer (it may have a lower specific heat capacity than water) and as such may help the previously “hotter” water cool!

   2cents 😀

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4. 

   Trikeabout

   August 11, 2012

   Hot water freezing before cool water in the same freezer is well known – it’s called the Mpemba Effect. It doesn’t work under all circumstances, but it does work. It may be down to the hotter water being degassed by heating. The Royal Society of Chemistry has a prize for anyone who can solve the puzzle definitively – http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2012/mpemba-effect-water-ice-hot.asp

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5. 

   McGarnical

   August 12, 2012

   I love the corkscrew idea and the ziplock-bag funnel.

   Needing to whip cream once, but the machine was broken, my dad jammed a fork into the drill. It made a bit of a mess but not that much. It worked.

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6. 

   Ash

   August 13, 2012

   Makeshift iron: Put your t-shirt on and let your body heat do the rest of the work. Sure, it’ll take an hour or three, but it works and saves time 😛

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7. 

   Jake D

   August 14, 2012

   Makeshift Iron: Get dressed and don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks of your creased clothes.

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8. 

   Arosem

   July 29, 2015

   He did say that putting hot water in an ice tray would freeze it quicker but that wasn’t the hack he was showing. The hack was if you freeze water straight after boiling it the ice cubes won’t be cloudy.

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