The whine of nature

[tenel]

So today's rant will not be about the weather, per se, but rather why I feel GA is not doing so well (test wise) in the subject of science

Comments

[jedihealer]

We use salt/sand combos here too, but to be fair, the road folks here up north have lots of experience at doing this. We have quite a few roads in the area that are close to ground water used for drinking, so no salt is used on them. These roads are clearly marked, (my brother lives on one of these roads), so one can take extra care. It is quite complicated, from what I understand.

I think that sand is used for traction, not melting.

[julietvalcouer]

We use sand here not to melt the snow or ice, but on the intersections and approaches to provide traction/friction for stopping and starting. Unless you kept salting (the highway trucks use a liquid solution of some kind) constantly, the salt would just melt the snow, which would then refreeze once more of it fell, outnumbering the salt. I don't salt in front of my door unless I'm SURE we're done with the snow for a while. And, as mentioned, much less damaging runoff. We just learn to drive slow.

But that is easily at once both the most complex and most cogent explanation of How Salt Melts Ice I've ever seen.