I'm not sure how to do it, but I am sure its doable.
Proof:
1. Take two prongs of ice, hold them apart in a cold stream of damp air, keeping the ice prongs intact.
2. Send a stream of hot air somewhere between the prongs,
and you get hot air passing between ice without melting it. QED. Scale it down, and you can make an icy cutting board and can heat the food on it.
What makes this special is that once your finished, the thin ice sheet melts away and the physical frame of the cutting board is left all clean (or nonexistent if the ice was the frame itself without any other non-water parts, in which case we get even cleaner than clean).
Perhaps there is some interesting better way that you know of for accomplishing this? Anyone?
I'm thinking of ice pots, and icy baking pans, that melt away when done.
If this doesn't work, then we'll go back to the drawing board, this time with a stream of air that holds the food away from the surface like the puck in air hockey.-- pashute, Feb 28 2023 Innovative induction heating of grapefruit juice https://www.ncbi.nl...rticles/PMC9055607/ [mylodon, Mar 17 2023] So you are basically using layers of air to keep the hot food away from the substrate.
This is kind of ingenious.
If the food does not touch the substrate and therefore does not make it dirty, what is the advantage of making the substrate out of ice as opposed to, for example, stainless steel? (one advantage of stainless steel is that it usually doesn't melt when you have finished using it).-- pocmloc, Feb 28 2023 // I'm not sure how to do it, but I am sure its doable //
[marked for tagline]-- whatrock, Feb 28 2023 What would keep the above-freezing temperature of the food from raising the temperature of the cutting board that it is sitting on? Wouldn't heat transfer to the board, thus thawing it and making it less useful?-- whatrock, Feb 28 2023 [whatty] I assumed it was the layer of cold air?-- pocmloc, Feb 28 2023 Do it in zero gravity.-- lurch, Feb 28 2023 rotfl! [a1]
Water would be a different idea. Yours.
I'm wondering if there's some physical phenomenon where the energy is "transferred" through without affecting the mid layer, like when a few adjacent balls in sequence are hit by a ball and all the ones on the way till the last stay in place while the last one shoots out. That happens with kinetic energy, and here I'm talking about thermal energy, which is much less controllable, but I'm asking.-- pashute, Feb 28 2023 Ice can be rather brittle, so I'm not sure about it's efficacy as a chopping board. I like the idea of being able to simply melt it instead of having to wash it, though. Perhaps a "best of both worlds" solution? Many fine tubes of an active refrigeration system, coated in ice. Warm air flowing through to stop the food from freezing to the ice. Possibly needs the air to be damp, to replenish ice lost to the ice stream (there's probably a balance somewhere with ice temp & air temp & humidity...). At the end, switch off the refrigeration & let the ice (the only surface in contact with the food) melt & drain away. No cleaning required.-- neutrinos_shadow, Feb 28 2023 //I'm wondering if there's some physical phenomenon where the energy is "transferred" through without affecting the mid layer, like when a few adjacent balls in sequence are hit by a ball and all the ones on the way till the last stay in place while the last one shoots out.//
There's not.
Your idea becomes closer though.
I think this is to do with entropy
So perhaps a Newtons Cradle Ice Saucepan could be invented. The stovetop converts the heat energy of the stove into kinetic energy in the form of hammers. The hammers strike the outside of the ice saucepan. The kinetic impulse of each hammer strike is transferred through the ice and is released into the food, where it turns into heat energy and thus heats the food. The heated food is prevented from back-heating the pan by _____________________________ .
Also, I think you will find that the middle balls of the Newton's Cradle actually heat up.
Entropy. Learn to love it.-- pocmloc, Feb 28 2023 [a1] //You can one side// That's great because I have always wanted to one side.-- pocmloc, Feb 28 2023 Just apply Minecraft physics. Easy. Blue ice never melts.-- RayfordSteele, Mar 01 2023 look up Nikolas Kurti's "inside-out baked alaska".-- gtoal, Mar 10 2023 // I'm not sure how to do it, but I am sure its doable//
//[marked for tagline]//
Seconded.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 11 2023 Why not use induction? That will avoid the metal ball issue, jump through the ice and give you if nothing else some warmed up grapefruit juice.-- mylodon, Mar 17 2023 random, halfbakery