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Yes — a general explanation

Hot water can in fact freeze faster than cold water for a wide range of experimental conditions. This phenomenon is extremely counterintuitive, and surprising even to most scientists, but it is in fact real. It has been seen and studied in numerous experiments. While this phenomenon has been known for centuries, and was described by Aristotle, Bacon, and Descartes [1—3], it was not introduced to the modern scientific community until 1969, by a Tanzanian high school pupil named Mpemba. Both the early scientific history of this effect, and the story of Mpemba's rediscovery of it, are interesting in their own right — Mpemba's story in particular providing a dramatic parable against making snap judgements about what is impossible. This is described separately below.

The phenomenon that hot water may freeze faster than cold is often called the Mpemba effect. Because, no doubt, most readers are extremely skeptical at this point, we should begin by stating precisely what we mean by the Mpemba effect. We start with two containers of water, which are identical in shape, and which hold identical amounts of water. The only difference between the two is that the water in one is at a higher (uniform) temperature than the water in the other. Now we cool both containers, using the exact same cooling process for each container. Under some conditions the initially warmer water will freeze first. If this occurs, we have seen the Mpemba effect. Of course, the initially warmer water will not freeze before the initially cooler water for all initial conditions. If the hot water starts at 99.9°C, and the cold water at 0.01°C, then clearly under those circumstances, the initially cooler water will freeze first. However, under some conditions the initially warmer water will freeze first: if that happens, you have seen the Mpemba effect. But you will not see the Mpemba effect for just any initial temperatures, container shapes, or cooling conditions.

Last modified: 2012-02-12 15:32:52 by resistance