Water- does it freeze quicker when it's hot or cold?? hmm...

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/57551/title/You_really_can_freeze_hot_water_faster_than_cold%2A

Summary!
         New experiments have shown that hot water will freeze faster than cold water under extrememly specific conditions. The Mpema effect is a special case named for Erasto B. Mpemba, a Tanzanian schoolboy. He noticed which making ice cream that warm milk froze quicker that the cold milk. Physicist Denis Osborned and Mpemba published an article of this in Physics Education in the year of 1969. Some other people that noticed this effect were Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes and Aristotle. Most people would think hot water would take long to freeze, because obviously you would think cold water is closer in temperature to zero degrees celcius. This is correct, but some scientific experiments have shown otherwise. “All in all, the work is a nice beginning, but not systematic enough to do more than confirm it can happen,” comments David Auerbach, a water expert , whose done experiments where this phenomenon does occur.

Reflection

            After reading this article I was very surprised, because I never would have thought that hot water would freeze quicker than warm water. Now that I know this I am going to try it on my own and see if it is really true. I am anxious to see the outcome, because even after reading this it is still hard to believe so I will have to find out for myself. Also, knowing this shows that if you are trying to freeze some type of liquid, heating it up first should make it freeze faster than having the liquid cold, correct? Correct! This also means when you are trying to make a strawberry milkshake and it needs to be frozen you should use warm milk instead of cold milk, because the quicker it freezes, the quicker you can enjoy your scrumptious snack!



http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/hot_water.html