Before you drive to work in the morning, you probably spend your last free moments standing in the dark, freezing your butt off, chipping away at the layer of ice on your windshield.
Want those 10 miserable minutes back? Use this DIY trick to de-ice your car in less than a minute.
How to Quickly Remove Ice From Your Car Windows
Fill up a spray bottle with two parts rubbing alcohol (70-percent isopropyl alcohol) and one part tap water, says David A. Katz, M.Sc., a chemistry professor at Pima Community College in Arizona. Keep it at room temperature—not in your car—between uses.
Spray the mixture on your windshield and the ice will start melting immediately. Let it sit for a minute, then use your scraper to wipe off the ice, Katz says.
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The mixture’s warm temperature causes some of the ice to thaw. Heat then transfers from that melting mess to the unbroken ice around it, which triggers even more melting.
So why not just splash regular room-temperature water on your windshield? While warm H2O would melt the ice, it’ll just freeze again, Katz says.
The rubbing alcohol/water mixture has a much lower freezing point (5 degrees Fahrenheit) than water’s 32 degrees. That means it won’t refreeze on your windshield unless the temperature outside dips close to 0 degrees, he explains.
Now you can enjoy your extra 10 minutes of sleep (or “SportsCenter”).