Your mom is hanging out with some of her friends at your house. She gets up to make some drinks for them. You watch as she fills four glasses. She fills the first with 200 g of water, the second with 100 g of water, the third with 100 g of scotch (which is at least 40% ethyl alcohol by volume), and a fourth with 200 g of water. She adds one or two ice cubes to each drink. Normally, you wouldn't pay any attention to this, but you're working on your chemistry homework and realize that this is a real-life example of a calorimetry experiment. It gets you thinking how much heat is involved in melting those ice cubes? What data would you need to collect to figure that out? Which drink is going to be the coolest once the ice melts? Warmest?

If you were holding the glass while the ice cube melted, what would you feel? Is your hand monitoring the change in temperature of the system of the surroundings? Is your hand now involved in the process?