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Hot water freezes faster than cold water. Which water freezes faster - hot or cold

Mpemba effect(Mpemba paradox) is a paradox that says that hot water under certain conditions, it freezes faster than cold water, although it must pass the temperature of cold water in the process of freezing. This paradox is an experimental fact that contradicts the usual ideas, according to which, under the same conditions, a hotter body needs more time to cool down to a certain temperature than a cooler body to cool down to the same temperature.

This phenomenon was noticed at the time by Aristotle, Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes, but only in 1963, the Tanzanian schoolboy Erasto Mpemba found that a hot ice cream mixture freezes faster than a cold one.

As a student of the Magamba high school in Tanzania, Erasto Mpemba did practical work in the culinary arts. He had to make homemade ice cream - boil milk, dissolve sugar in it, cool it to room temperature and then place in the refrigerator to freeze. Apparently, Mpemba was not a particularly diligent student and procrastinated on the first part of the assignment. Fearing that he would not be in time by the end of the lesson, he put the still hot milk in the refrigerator. To his surprise, it froze even earlier than the milk of his comrades, prepared according to a given technology.

After that, Mpemba experimented not only with milk, but also with ordinary water. In any case, already being a student at the Mkvava High School, he asked Professor Dennis Osborne from the University College in Dar es Salaam (invited by the director of the school to give a lecture on physics to the students) about water: "If you take two identical containers with equal volumes of water so that in one of them the water has a temperature of 35 ° C, and in the other - 100 ° C, and put them in the freezer, then in the second the water will freeze faster. Why? Osborne became interested in this issue and soon in 1969, together with Mpemba, they published the results of their experiments in the journal "Physics Education". Since then, the effect they discovered is called Mpemba effect.

Until now, no one knows exactly how to explain this strange effect. Scientists do not have a single version, although there are many. It's all about the difference in the properties of hot and cold water, but it is not yet clear which properties play a role in this case: the difference in supercooling, evaporation, ice formation, convection, or the effect of liquefied gases on water at different temperatures.

The paradox of the Mpemba effect is that the time during which the body cools down to temperature environment, should be proportional to the temperature difference between this body and the environment. This law was established by Newton and since then has been confirmed many times in practice. In the same effect, water at 100°C cools down to 0°C faster than the same amount of water at 35°C.

However, this does not yet imply a paradox, since the Mpemba effect can also be explained within known physics. Here are some explanations for the Mpemba effect:

Evaporation

Hot water evaporates faster from the container, thereby reducing its volume, and a smaller volume of water with the same temperature freezes faster. Water heated to 100 C loses 16% of its mass when cooled to 0 C.

The evaporation effect is a double effect. First, the mass of water required for cooling is reduced. And secondly, the temperature decreases due to the fact that the heat of evaporation of the transition from the water phase to the vapor phase decreases.

temperature difference

Because the temperature difference between hot water and more cold air - hence the heat exchange in this case is more intense and hot water cools faster.

hypothermia

When water is cooled below 0 C, it does not always freeze. Under certain conditions, it can undergo supercooling while continuing to remain liquid at temperatures below the freezing point. In some cases, water can remain liquid even at -20 C.

The reason for this effect is that in order for the first ice crystals to begin to form, centers of crystal formation are needed. If they are not in liquid water, then supercooling will continue until the temperature drops enough that crystals begin to form spontaneously. When they start to form in the supercooled liquid, they will start to grow faster, forming an ice slush that will freeze to form ice.

Hot water is most susceptible to hypothermia because heating it eliminates dissolved gases and bubbles, which in turn can serve as centers for the formation of ice crystals.

Why does hypothermia cause hot water to freeze faster? In the case of cold water, which is not supercooled, the following occurs. In this case thin layer ice will form on the surface of the vessel. This layer of ice will act as an insulator between the water and cold air and will prevent further evaporation. The rate of formation of ice crystals in this case will be less. In the case of hot water undergoing subcooling, the subcooled water does not have a protective surface layer of ice. Therefore, it loses heat much faster through the open top.

When the supercooling process ends and the water freezes, much more heat is lost and therefore more ice.

Many researchers of this effect consider hypothermia to be the main factor in the case of the Mpemba effect.

Convection

Cold water begins to freeze from above, thereby worsening the processes of heat radiation and convection, and hence the loss of heat, while hot water begins to freeze from below.

This effect is explained by an anomaly in the density of water. Water has a maximum density at 4 C. If you cool water to 4 C and put it at a lower temperature, the surface layer of water will freeze faster. Because this water is less dense than water at 4°C, it will stay on the surface, forming a thin cold layer. Under these conditions, a thin layer of ice will form on the surface of the water for a short time, but this layer of ice will serve as an insulator protecting the lower layers of water, which will remain at a temperature of 4 C. Therefore, the further cooling process will be slower.

In the case of hot water, the situation is completely different. The surface layer of water will cool more quickly due to evaporation and a greater temperature difference. Also, cold water layers are denser than hot water layers, so the cold water layer will sink down, raising the layer. warm water to the surface. This circulation of water ensures a rapid drop in temperature.

But why does this process not reach the equilibrium point? To explain the Mpemba effect from this point of view of convection, it would be necessary to assume that the cold and hot layers of water are separated and the convection process itself continues after average temperature water drops below 4 C.

However, there is no experimental evidence to support this hypothesis that cold and hot layers of water are separated by convection.

gases dissolved in water

Water always contains gases dissolved in it - oxygen and carbon dioxide. These gases have the ability to lower the freezing point of water. When the water is heated, these gases are released from the water because their solubility in water at high temperature below. Therefore, when hot water is cooled, there are always fewer dissolved gases in it than in unheated cold water. Therefore, the freezing point of heated water is higher and it freezes faster. This factor is sometimes considered as the main one in explaining the Mpemba effect, although there are no experimental data confirming this fact.

Thermal conductivity

This mechanism can play a significant role when water is placed in the freezer. refrigerator compartment in small containers. Under these conditions, it has been observed that a container of hot water melts ice under it. freezer, thereby improving thermal contact with the wall of the freezer and thermal conductivity. As a result, heat is removed from the hot water container faster than from the cold one. In turn, the container with cold water does not melt snow under it.

All these (as well as other) conditions have been studied in many experiments, but an unequivocal answer to the question - which of them provide a 100% reproduction of the Mpemba effect - has not been obtained.

So, for example, in 1995, the German physicist David Auerbach studied the influence of supercooling of water on this effect. He discovered that hot water, reaching a supercooled state, freezes at a higher temperature than cold water, and therefore faster than the latter. But cold water reaches the supercooled state faster than the hot one, thereby compensating for the previous lag.

In addition, Auerbach's results contradicted earlier data that hot water is able to achieve greater supercooling due to fewer crystallization centers. When water is heated, the gases dissolved in it are removed from it, and when it is boiled, some salts dissolved in it precipitate.

So far, only one thing can be asserted - the reproduction of this effect essentially depends on the conditions under which the experiment is carried out. Precisely because it is not always reproduced.

In 1963, a schoolboy from Tanzania named Erasto Mpemba asked his teacher a stupid question - why did warm ice cream freeze faster than cold ice cream in his freezer?

Erasto Mpemba was a student at Magambin High School in Tanzania doing practical cooking work. He had to make homemade ice cream - boil milk, dissolve sugar in it, cool it to room temperature, and then put it in the refrigerator to freeze. Apparently, Mpemba was not a particularly diligent student and procrastinated on the first part of the assignment. Fearing that he would not be in time by the end of the lesson, he put still hot milk in the refrigerator. To his surprise, it froze even earlier than the milk of his comrades, prepared according to a given technology.

He turned to the physics teacher for clarification, but he only laughed at the student, saying the following: "This is not world physics, but the physics of Mpemba." After that, Mpemba experimented not only with milk, but also with ordinary water.

In any case, already being a student at the Mkvava High School, he asked Professor Dennis Osborne from the University College in Dar es Salaam (invited by the director of the school to give a lecture on physics to the students) about water: “If you take two identical containers with equal volumes of water so that in one of them the water has a temperature of 35 ° C, and in the other - 100 ° C, and put them in the freezer, then in the second the water will freeze faster. Why?" Osborn became interested in this issue and soon in 1969, together with Mpemba, they published the results of their experiments in the journal Physics Education. Since then, the effect they discovered is called the Mpemba effect.

Are you curious to know why this happens? Just a few years ago, scientists managed to explain this phenomenon ...

The Mpemba effect (Mpemba Paradox) is a paradox that states that hot water under certain conditions freezes faster than cold water, although it must pass the temperature of cold water in the process of freezing. This paradox is an experimental fact that contradicts the usual ideas, according to which, under the same conditions, a hotter body needs more time to cool down to a certain temperature than a cooler body to cool down to the same temperature.

This phenomenon was noticed at the time by Aristotle, Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. Until now, no one knows exactly how to explain this strange effect. Scientists do not have a single version, although there are many. It's all about the difference in the properties of hot and cold water, but it is not yet clear which properties play a role in this case: the difference in supercooling, evaporation, ice formation, convection, or the effect of liquefied gases on water at different temperatures. The paradox of the Mpemba effect is that the time during which the body cools down to the ambient temperature must be proportional to the temperature difference between this body and the environment. This law was established by Newton and since then has been confirmed many times in practice. In the same effect, water at 100°C cools down to 0°C faster than the same amount of water at 35°C.

Since then there have been different versions, one of which sounded in the following way: part of the hot water at first simply evaporates, and then, when a smaller amount of it remains, the water solidifies faster. This version, due to its simplicity, became the most popular, but scientists were not completely satisfied.

Now a team of researchers from University of Technology Nanyang in Singapore (Nanyang Technological University), led by chemist Xi Zhang, said they have solved the age-old mystery of why warm water freezes faster than cold water. As Chinese experts found out, the secret lies in the amount of energy stored in hydrogen bonds between water molecules.

As you know, water molecules are made up of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms held together. covalent bonds, which at the particle level looks like an exchange of electrons. Another known fact is that hydrogen atoms are attracted to oxygen atoms from neighboring molecules - in this case, hydrogen bonds are formed.

At the same time, water molecules as a whole repel each other. Scientists from Singapore noticed that the warmer the water, the greater the distance between the molecules of the liquid due to the increase in repulsive forces. As a result, hydrogen bonds are stretched, and therefore store more energy. This energy is released when the water cools - the molecules approach each other. And the return of energy, as you know, means cooling.

Here are the hypotheses put forward by scientists:

Evaporation

Hot water evaporates faster from the container, thereby reducing its volume, and a smaller volume of water with the same temperature freezes faster. Water heated to 100°C loses 16% of its mass when cooled to 0°C. The evaporation effect is a double effect. First, the mass of water required for cooling is reduced. And secondly, due to evaporation, its temperature decreases.

temperature difference

Due to the fact that the temperature difference between hot water and cold air is greater - therefore, heat transfer in this case is more intense and hot water cools faster.

hypothermia
When water is cooled below 0°C, it does not always freeze. Under certain conditions, it can undergo supercooling while continuing to remain liquid at temperatures below the freezing point. In some cases, water can remain liquid even at -20°C. The reason for this effect is that in order for the first ice crystals to begin to form, centers of crystal formation are needed. If they are not in liquid water, then supercooling will continue until the temperature drops enough that crystals begin to form spontaneously. When they start to form in the supercooled liquid, they will start to grow faster, forming an ice slush that will freeze to form ice. Hot water is most susceptible to hypothermia because heating it eliminates dissolved gases and bubbles, which in turn can serve as centers for the formation of ice crystals. Why does hypothermia cause hot water to freeze faster? In the case of cold water that is not supercooled, what happens is that a thin layer of ice forms on its surface, which acts as an insulator between the water and the cold air, and thus prevents further evaporation. The rate of formation of ice crystals in this case will be less. In the case of hot water undergoing subcooling, the subcooled water does not have a protective surface layer of ice. Therefore, it loses heat much faster through the open top. When the supercooling process ends and the water freezes, much more heat is lost and therefore more ice is formed. Many researchers of this effect consider hypothermia to be the main factor in the case of the Mpemba effect.
Convection

Cold water begins to freeze from above, thereby worsening the processes of heat radiation and convection, and hence the loss of heat, while hot water begins to freeze from below. This effect is explained by an anomaly in the density of water. Water has a maximum density at 4°C. If you cool water to 4°C and place it in an environment with a lower temperature, the surface layer of water will freeze faster. Because this water is less dense than water at 4°C, it will stay on the surface, forming a thin cold layer. Under these conditions, a thin layer of ice will form on the surface of the water for a short time, but this layer of ice will serve as an insulator protecting the lower layers of water, which will remain at 4°C. Therefore, the further cooling process will be slower. In the case of hot water, the situation is completely different. The surface layer of water will cool more rapidly due to evaporation and greater temperature differences. Also, cold water layers are denser than hot water layers, so the cold water layer will sink down, lifting the warm water layer to the surface. This circulation of water ensures a rapid drop in temperature. But why does this process not reach the equilibrium point? To explain the Mpemba effect from the point of view of convection, it would be assumed that the cold and hot layers of water are separated and the convection process itself continues after the average water temperature drops below 4°C. However, there is no experimental evidence to support this hypothesis that cold and hot water layers are separated by convection.

gases dissolved in water

Water always contains gases dissolved in it - oxygen and carbon dioxide. These gases have the ability to lower the freezing point of water. When the water is heated, these gases are released from the water because their solubility in water at high temperature is lower. Therefore, when hot water is cooled, there are always fewer dissolved gases in it than in unheated cold water. Therefore, the freezing point of heated water is higher and it freezes faster. This factor is sometimes considered as the main one in explaining the Mpemba effect, although there are no experimental data confirming this fact.

Thermal conductivity

This mechanism can play a significant role when water is placed in a refrigerator freezer in small containers. Under these conditions, it has been observed that the container with hot water melts the ice of the freezer underneath, thereby improving thermal contact with the wall of the freezer and thermal conductivity. As a result, heat is removed from the hot water container faster than from the cold one. In turn, the container with cold water does not melt snow under it. All these (as well as other) conditions have been studied in many experiments, but an unambiguous answer to the question - which of them provide a 100% reproduction of the Mpemba effect - has not been obtained. So, for example, in 1995, the German physicist David Auerbach studied the influence of supercooling of water on this effect. He discovered that hot water, reaching a supercooled state, freezes at a higher temperature than cold water, and therefore faster than the latter. But cold water reaches a supercooled state faster than hot water, thereby compensating for the previous lag. In addition, Auerbach's results contradicted earlier data that hot water is able to achieve greater supercooling due to fewer crystallization centers. When water is heated, gases dissolved in it are removed from it, and when it is boiled, some salts dissolved in it precipitate. So far, only one thing can be asserted - the reproduction of this effect significantly depends on the conditions under which the experiment is carried out. Precisely because it is not always reproduced.

And here's the most likely reason.

As the chemists write in their article, which can be found on the arXiv.org preprint site, hydrogen bonds are stretched more strongly in hot water than in cold water. Thus, it turns out that more energy is stored in the hydrogen bonds of hot water, which means that more of it is released when cooled to sub-zero temperatures. For this reason, freezing is faster.

To date, scientists have solved this riddle only theoretically. When they present convincing evidence of their version, then the question of why hot water freezes faster than cold water can be considered closed.

Water- a fairly simple substance from a chemical point of view, however, it has a number of unusual properties that never cease to amaze scientists. Below are some facts that few people know about.

1. Which water freezes faster - cold or hot?

Take two containers of water: pour hot water into one and cold water into the other, and place them in the freezer. Hot water will freeze faster than cold water, although logically, cold water should have turned into ice first: after all, hot water must first cool down to cold temperature, and then turn into ice, while cold water does not need to cool down. Why is this happening?

In 1963, a Tanzanian student named Erasto B. Mpemba, while freezing a prepared ice cream mixture, noticed that the hot mixture solidified faster in the freezer than the cold one. When the young man shared his discovery with a physics teacher, he only laughed at him. Fortunately, the student was persistent and convinced the teacher to conduct an experiment, which confirmed his discovery: under certain conditions, hot water really freezes faster than cold water.

Now this phenomenon of hot water freezing faster than cold water is called " Mpemba effect". True, long before him, this unique property of water was noted by Aristotle, Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.

Scientists do not fully understand the nature of this phenomenon, explaining it either by the difference in hypothermia, evaporation, ice formation, convection, or the effect of liquefied gases on hot and cold water.

2. She is able to freeze instantly

Everyone knows that water always turns to ice when cooled to 0 °C ... except in some cases! Such a case, for example, is supercooling, which is a property of very clean water remain liquid even when chilled below freezing. This phenomenon becomes possible due to the fact that the environment does not contain crystallization centers or nuclei that could provoke the formation of ice crystals. And so water remains in liquid form, even when cooled to temperatures below zero degrees Celsius.

crystallization process can be provoked, for example, by gas bubbles, impurities (pollution), uneven surface of the container. Without them, water will remain in a liquid state. When the crystallization process starts, you can watch how the super-cooled water instantly turns into ice.

Note that "superheated" water also remains liquid even when heated above its boiling point.

3. 19 states of water

Without hesitation, name how many different states water has? If you answered three: solid, liquid, gaseous, then you are mistaken. Scientists distinguish at least 5 different states of water in liquid form and 14 states in frozen form.

Remember the conversation about super-chilled water? So, no matter what you do, at -38 ° C, even the purest super-cooled water will suddenly turn into ice. What happens as the temperature drops further? At -120°C, something strange begins to happen to water: it becomes super-viscous or viscous, like molasses, and at temperatures below -135°C, it turns into "glassy" or "glassy" water - solid, which lacks a crystal structure.

4. Water surprises physicists

At the molecular level, water is even more surprising. In 1995, a neutron scattering experiment conducted by scientists gave an unexpected result: physicists found that neutrons directed at water molecules “see” 25% fewer hydrogen protons than expected.

It turned out that at the speed of one attosecond (10 -18 seconds) an unusual quantum effect takes place, and chemical formula water instead H2O, becomes H1.5O!

5. Water memory

Alternative official medicine homeopathy states that a dilute solution medicinal product can have a therapeutic effect on the body, even if the dilution factor is so large that there is nothing left in the solution but water molecules. Proponents of homeopathy explain this paradox with a concept called " water memory”, according to which water at the molecular level has a “memory” of a substance once dissolved in it and retains the properties of a solution of the initial concentration after not a single ingredient molecule remains in it.

An international team of scientists led by Professor Madeleine Ennis of Queen's University of Belfast, who criticized the principles of homeopathy, conducted an experiment in 2002 to disprove the concept once and for all. The result was the opposite. After that, scientists said that they managed to prove the reality of the effect " water memory". However, experiments conducted under the supervision of independent experts did not bring results. Disputes about the existence of the phenomenon " water memory» continue.

Water has many other unusual properties that we have not covered in this article. For example, the density of water varies with temperature (the density of ice is less than that of water); water has a fairly large surface tension; in a liquid state, water is a complex and dynamically changing network of water clusters, and it is the behavior of clusters that affects the structure of water, etc.

About these and many other unexpected features water can be read in the article Anomalous properties of water”, the author of which is Martin Chaplin, professor at the University of London.

Which water freezes faster, hot or cold, is influenced by many factors, but the question itself seems a little strange. It is understood, and it is known from physics, that hot water still needs time to cool down to the temperature of comparable cold water in order to turn into ice. Cold water can skip this stage, and, accordingly, it wins in time.

But the answer to the question of which water freezes faster - cold or hot - on the street in frost, any resident knows northern latitudes. In fact, scientifically, it turns out that in any case, cold water simply has to freeze faster.

So did the teacher of physics, who was approached by the schoolboy Erasto Mpemba in 1963 with a request to explain why the cold mixture of future ice cream freezes longer than a similar, but hot one.

"This is not world physics, but some kind of Mpemba physics"

At that time, the teacher only laughed at this, but Deniss Osborne, a professor of physics, who at one time went to the same school where Erasto studied, experimentally confirmed the existence of such an effect, although there was no explanation for this then. In 1969 a popular scientific journal published a joint article by the two men who described this peculiar effect.

Since then, by the way, the question of which water freezes faster - hot or cold, has its own name - the effect, or paradox, Mpemba.

The question has been around for a long time

Naturally, such a phenomenon has taken place before, and it was mentioned in the works of other scientists. Not only the schoolboy was interested in this question, but Rene Descartes and even Aristotle thought about it at one time.

Here are just approaches to solving this paradox began to look only at the end of the twentieth century.

Conditions for a paradox to occur

As with ice cream, it's not just ordinary water that freezes during the experiment. Certain conditions must be present in order to start arguing which water freezes faster - cold or hot. What influences this process?

Now, in the 21st century, several options have been put forward that can explain this paradox. Which water freezes faster, hot or cold, may depend on the fact that it has a higher evaporation rate than cold water. Thus, its volume decreases, and with a decrease in volume, the freezing time becomes shorter than if we take a similar initial volume of cold water.

Freezer has long been defrosted

Which water freezes faster, and why it does so, can be affected by the snow lining that may be present in the freezer of the refrigerator used for the experiment. If you take two containers that are identical in volume, but one of them will have hot water and the other cold water, the container with hot water will melt the snow underneath, thereby improving the contact of the thermal level with the refrigerator wall. A cold water container can't do that. If there is no such lining with snow in the refrigerator, cold water should freeze faster.

Top - bottom

Also, the phenomenon of which water freezes faster - hot or cold, is explained as follows. Following certain laws, cold water begins to freeze from upper layers when hot does it the other way around - it starts to freeze from the bottom up. At the same time, it turns out that cold water, having a cold layer on top with ice already formed in places, thus impairs convection processes and thermal radiation, thereby explaining which water freezes faster - cold or hot. A photo from amateur experiments is attached, and here it is clearly visible.

The heat goes out, tending upwards, and there it meets a very cool layer. There is no free path for heat radiation, so the cooling process becomes difficult. Hot water has absolutely no such barriers in its path. Which freezes faster - cold or hot, on which the probable outcome depends, you can expand the answer by saying that any water has certain substances dissolved in it.

Impurities in the composition of water as a factor influencing the outcome

If you do not cheat and use water with the same composition, where the concentrations of certain substances are identical, then cold water should freeze faster. But if a situation occurs when the dissolved chemical elements available only in hot water, while cold water does not have them, then there is a possibility for hot water to freeze earlier. This is explained by the fact that the dissolved substances in water create centers of crystallization, and with a small number of these centers, the transformation of water into a solid state is difficult. Even supercooling of water is possible, in the sense that at sub-zero temperatures it will be in a liquid state.

But all these versions, apparently, did not suit the scientists to the end, and they continued to work on this issue. In 2013, a team of researchers in Singapore said they had solved the age-old mystery.

A group of Chinese scientists claim that the secret of this effect lies in the amount of energy that is stored between water molecules in its bonds, called hydrogen bonds.

The answer from Chinese scientists

Further information will follow, for the understanding of which it is necessary to have some knowledge in chemistry in order to figure out which water freezes faster - hot or cold. As you know, it consists of two H (hydrogen) atoms and one O (oxygen) atom held together by covalent bonds.

But hydrogen atoms of one molecule are also attracted to neighboring molecules, to their oxygen component. These bonds are called hydrogen bonds.

At the same time, it is worth remembering that at the same time, water molecules act repulsively on each other. Scientists noted that when water is heated, the distance between its molecules increases, and this is facilitated by repulsive forces. It turns out that occupying one distance between molecules in a cold state, one can say that they stretch, and they have a greater supply of energy. It is this energy reserve that is released when water molecules begin to approach each other, that is, cooling occurs. It turns out that a larger supply of energy in hot water, and its greater release when cooled to sub-zero temperatures, occurs faster than in cold water, which has a smaller supply of such energy. So which water freezes faster - cold or hot? On the street and in the laboratory, the Mpemba paradox should occur, and hot water should turn into ice faster.

But the question is still open

There is only theoretical confirmation of this clue - all this is written in beautiful formulas and seems plausible. But when the experimental data, which water freezes faster - hot or cold, will be put in a practical sense, and their results will be presented, then it will be possible to consider the question of the Mpemba paradox closed.

Mpemba effect(Mpemba paradox) - a paradox that states that hot water under certain conditions freezes faster than cold water, although it must pass the temperature of cold water in the process of freezing. This paradox is an experimental fact that contradicts the usual ideas, according to which, under the same conditions, a hotter body needs more time to cool down to a certain temperature than a cooler body to cool down to the same temperature.

Erasto Mpemba was a student at Magambin High School in Tanzania doing practical cooking work. He had to make homemade ice cream - boil milk, dissolve sugar in it, cool it to room temperature, and then put it in the refrigerator to freeze. Apparently, Mpemba was not a particularly diligent student and procrastinated on the first part of the assignment. Fearing that he would not be in time by the end of the lesson, he put the still hot milk in the refrigerator. To his surprise, it froze even earlier than the milk of his comrades, prepared according to a given technology.

The paradox of the Mpemba effect is that the time during which the body cools down to the ambient temperature must be proportional to the temperature difference between this body and the environment. This law was established by Newton and since then has been confirmed many times in practice. In the same effect, water at 100°C cools down to 0°C faster than the same amount of water at 35°C.

However, this does not yet imply a paradox, since the Mpemba effect can also be explained within known physics. Here are some explanations for the Mpemba effect:

Evaporation

temperature difference

Due to the fact that the temperature difference between hot water and cold air is greater - hence the heat exchange in this case is more intense and hot water cools faster.

hypothermia

Hot water is most susceptible to hypothermia because heating it eliminates dissolved gases and bubbles, which in turn can serve as centers for the formation of ice crystals.

Why does hypothermia cause hot water to freeze faster? In the case of cold water, which is not supercooled, the following occurs. In this case, a thin layer of ice will form on the surface of the vessel. This layer of ice will act as an insulator between the water and cold air and will prevent further evaporation. The rate of formation of ice crystals in this case will be less. In the case of hot water undergoing subcooling, the subcooled water does not have a protective surface layer of ice. Therefore, it loses heat much faster through the open top.

When the supercooling process ends and the water freezes, much more heat is lost and therefore more ice is formed.

Many researchers of this effect consider hypothermia to be the main factor in the case of the Mpemba effect.

Convection

Cold water begins to freeze from above, thereby worsening the processes of heat radiation and convection, and hence the loss of heat, while hot water begins to freeze from below.

In the case of hot water, the situation is completely different. The surface layer of water will cool more quickly due to evaporation and a greater temperature difference. Also, cold water layers are denser than hot water layers, so the cold water layer will sink down, lifting the warm water layer to the surface. This circulation of water ensures a rapid drop in temperature.

But why does this process not reach the equilibrium point? To explain the Mpemba effect from this point of view of convection, one would have to assume that the cold and hot layers of water are separated and the convection process itself continues after the average water temperature drops below 4 C.

However, there is no experimental evidence to support this hypothesis that cold and hot layers of water are separated by convection.

gases dissolved in water

Water always contains gases dissolved in it - oxygen and carbon dioxide. These gases have the ability to lower the freezing point of water. When the water is heated, these gases are released from the water because their solubility in water at high temperature is lower. Therefore, when hot water is cooled, there are always fewer dissolved gases in it than in unheated cold water. Therefore, the freezing point of heated water is higher and it freezes faster. This factor is sometimes considered as the main one in explaining the Mpemba effect, although there are no experimental data confirming this fact.

Thermal conductivity

So, for example, in 1995, the German physicist David Auerbach studied the influence of supercooling of water on this effect. He discovered that hot water, reaching a supercooled state, freezes at a higher temperature than cold water, and therefore faster than the latter. But cold water reaches the supercooled state faster than hot water, thereby compensating for the previous lag.

O. V. Mosin

Literarysources:

"Hot water freezes faster than cold water. Why does it do so?", Jearl Walker in The Amateur Scientist, Scientific American, Vol. 237, no. 3, pp. 246-257; September, 1977.

"The Freezing of Hot and Cold Water", G.S. Kell in American Journal of Physics, Vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 564-565; May 1969.

"Supercooling and the Mpemba effect", David Auerbach, in American Journal of Physics, Vol. 63, no. 10, pp. 882-885; Oct, 1995.

"The Mpemba effect: The freezing times of hot and cold water", Charles A. Knight, in American Journal of Physics, Vol. 64, no. 5, p 524; May, 1996.

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