Children eat ice cream that's melting fast at the annual horse fair Appleby-in-Westmorland, Britain.
Phil Noble/Reuters
Scientists at the University of Edinburgh are out to fix one of the most vexing problems in the world: The melting ice cream cone.
“We’re not talking about ice cream that doesn’t melt at all, we’re talking about ice cream that melts more slowly than you would typically expect from a scoop of ice cream sitting on top of an ice cream cone for example,” says Kate MacPhee, a professor of biological physics in the Institute of Condensed Matter and Complex Systems at the University of Edinburgh.
MacPhee’s latest research involves ice cream, in particular, a naturally-occurring protein known as BsIA that works by binding together the air, fat and water in ice cream. The result is ice cream that stays frozen for longer.
“It’s not [a protein] that can cause you any harm, and that protein stabilizes the ice cream and slows down the melting process,” she says.
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