It's definitely not hard-hitting journalism, but sometimes you've got to have a little fun, especially the Friday before Memorial Day weekend!
East Tennessee is in the midst of a late-May heatwave, with temperatures in the nineties this week. We're normally in the 80's about now, so this is feeling more like mid-July.
With everyone talking about melting in the summer heat, we were inspired to see just how long it would take some ordinary items to melt in the Knoxville sun.
We froze a big cube of ice about 7 1/2 inches square and five inches tall and set it out in the parking lot. We followed that with a Snickers candy bar, a tube of lipstick, and an entire pack of crayons. Then we turned on the camera and hit record at 11:50 a.m.
As you'd imagine, the ice started shrinking quickly and by 4:30 p.m. was reduced to a tiny sliver then gone within minutes. Within a few hours, the crayons were liquefying in a colorful heap, and the candy bar was slowly melting away. That lipstick, though, held it's own in the heat pretty well!
Around 5:15, we got a little more hands on. The ice was gone, but anchor John Becker was brave enough to actually touch the stuff to see how it was holding up.
The inside of the candy bar was still holding together, but the chocolate was a mess. Some of the crayons were completely dissolved into goo, but some, while soft on the outside, were still sort of solid inside. The lipstick looked solid, but it didn't hold up very well when meteorologist Cassie Nall swiped the pavement with it.
So no big surprises here, but a good reminder about what not to leave out in your car on a hot day. What a mess!