LONG TIME NO BLOGGING! My parents said I should probably blog at least weekly if I want to find success on this blog, but that's been difficult in the midst of AP Exams, the ACT, and SAT II's, thus the hiatus.
Today I'll just blog about what's on my mind and avoid any current events.
Don't they always give you ice when you visit a fast food restaurant? I mean, half the glass is full of ice and when it melts into your drink, it tastes nasty. Why do they do that? To save money, right? That's what I thought up till about last week, but now I'm starting to doubt it. A soft drink is pretty cheap to manufacture; maybe around $0.10 for a large drink at a fast food restaurant. I bet that ice is cheaper than soda since it doesn't have any ingredients.But I'm going to assume that the water of the ice is only slightly cheaper than soda because sugar and high fructose corn syrup aren't that expensive.
And the most expensive part of the ice - the freezing. So much energy is expended in actually trying to freeze ice, I believe that it may be worthwhile to only serve ice upon request. That way, the restaurant doesn't have to expend significant amounts of energy to constantly refreeze ice. I highly doubt that people are going to come up asking for ice in the first place. Granted, that ice maker would constantly have to be running, but a smaller variant can probably replace the one most places have!
I think in the next few weeks I'll try to calculate the amount of money that is saved if this effort is taken, and how it can contribute to the American economy - a few cents throughout the nation has the potential to change the GDP significantly.
You forgot to mention the most important part: making ice is inefficient and causes deadweight loss. The consumer would rather have more soda instead of the ice and ice costs more than soda to the producer.
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