virphen wrote:I am showing my ignorance I know, but I always thought it was to do with the mathematics of rates of change. I was surprised to see it's a mystery, which makes me think that's just another piece of bullshit which pervades life that I've accepted uncritically.

Shame on me.

Pulsar wrote:A very interesting review article: http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0512262

Matthew Shute wrote:It's obvious, innit? It must be Divine Intervention. Either that or the aliens.

Matthew Shute wrote:I'd rather drown myself in the font, Microfarad.

Hey, I'll bet pl0bs has the answer. "Hot water has a greater conscious propensity for mood-swings than cold water, and is thus more efficient at 'chilling' quickly".

Tim Danaher wrote:Interesting, but how did the ancient Greeks freeze water? Sand evaporators can keep things cool, but freezing?

mattwilson wrote:I've heard of the effect but never experimented to check it out. I'm going to throw my uneducated mind into the fray and postulate that in heated water the atoms are more loosely spaced (less bonded hydrogen/oxygen atoms) and as in order to freeze, water assumes a uniform structure (hence why it expands when frozen) that the atoms may be more "free" to assume this structure under rapid cooling than the more closer bound atoms in cool water.

Ancient problem has eluded scientists and philosophers for centuries.
£1,000 reward offered to member of public who can provide 'convincing explanation' of phenonemon.

chairman bill wrote:

Tim Danaher wrote:Interesting, but how did the ancient Greeks freeze water? Sand evaporators can keep things cool, but freezing?

High on the mountains, in winter - lots of snow & ice. Bring it down, seal it in deep caves?

gustavfenk wrote:I will do some experiments to try this out but I don't think that it is the kind of thing that can be tested using "science".

gustavfenk wrote:My hypothesis is that to freeze water what you are doing is "curing" the water of its liquidness. It is heat that causes the water to be liquid. We all know that like cures like, so the heat in the hot water acts as a medicine to cure the water of its liquid state. As the hot water gets cooler, the heat is becoming more diluted and therefore acts as an increasingly powerful medicine. This is why the hot water freezes faster than cool water.

But doesn't the hot water become exactly the same as the cool water at some point in the freezing process? Well, yes it does but the hot water has a "memory" of its previous hotness and therefore is different to the water that started off cool.

I am confident that sucussing the hot water would further increase its rate of freezing. I will do some experiments to try this out but I don't think that it is the kind of thing that can be tested using "science".