Cold Pack Exothermic Reaction

Endothermic Reactions of Cold Packs An instant cold pack is a device that is made up of two bags; one containing water, and an inside bag containing ammonium nitrate. Have you ever wondered how people use hot packs to warm up their hands in the winter or use cold packs on a real terrible injury? How can this package produce heat or cold by only shaking or crushing those packs? Ammonium nitrate is a chemical compound that is a white crystalline solid used as fertilizer and as a part of explosives. When the inner bag is shaken or broken by squeezing, it is allowed to dissolve the solid in an endothermic reaction. Discussing the exothermic and endothermic reactions of how the mixture of ammonium nitrate and water are caused by is important to understand. Understanding heat energy and heat capacity will be discussed of thermodynamics, which is the branch of physics that involve heat and temperature to
An exothermic reaction releases heat causing the temperature of the surroundings to rise. Cold packs contain ammonium nitrate that is considered an explosive by the exothermic reaction. “Many chemical reactions release energy in the form of heat, light, or sound. These are exothermic reactions. Exothermic reactions may occur spontaneously and result in higher randomness or entropy of the system. They are denoted by a negative heat flow (heat is lost to the surroundings) and decrease in enthalpy. In the lab, exothermic reactions produce heat or may even be explosive (Helmenstine, 2017).” An example of exothermic reactions would be “So boiling water is an endothermic experience. But when the same water starts letting out heat and begins freezing, the exothermic reaction begins and water finally becomes ice cubes. Physical Chemistry tells us that in an exothermic reaction, the temperature of the surrounding objects goes on increasing, when the exothermic process lets out heat