Posted on 06/27/2012 12:41:32 AM PDT by neverdem
It seems a simple enough question - yet it has baffled the best brains for at least 2,300 years.
Now the Royal Society of Chemistry is offering £1000 to the person or team producing the best and most creative explanation of the phenomenon, known today as The Mpemba Effect.
Competition judges will be looking for an outside-the-box, inventive submission. In addition, the format of the submission should be creative and eye-catching.
Any medium or technology can be employed to make the case, including articles, illustrations or even film.
Submissions can be based on, and reference, existing research. The winning submission will be scientifically sound, and arresting in presentation and delivery.
The public has four weeks to crack the case before a group of the world's brightest young science brains take on the challenge in London as one aspect of a special science communications meeting entitled Hermes 2012.
Fittingly, that group's bid for glory will be made in the first week of the Olympics. The sharpest international postgraduate science students will travel to England from around the globe to participate in the Hermes 2012 event.
The Royal Society of Chemistry is sponsoring this visit to the UK of the hand-picked young scientists, who will gather at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park...
(Excerpt) Read more at rsc.org ...
Isn’t this a test by the Royal Society, to see who is dumber?
The general public or their students ?
A new ‘evaluation’ method, perhaps?
Or is the Royal Society training their students to accept ‘academic’ knowledge (the belief that hot water freezes faster) without question?
If you put two identical ice trays, filled with exactly the same amount of water, at the exact same temperature, in the freezer, which one will freeze first ?
If you look at the water molecule it is ‘lopesided’. When heated, a body of water tends to layer thus tends to align the lopesidedness, allowing a faster crystalization when the temperature drops.
I like your answer best.
Hot water freezes faster than cold water for the same reason that global warming e-mails keep getting changed by outside forces when subject to observation by discriminating minds.
That's part of it. Evaporation itself causes cooling, which is another part.
I remember trying to test the old wive's tale as a kid, by putting a tray of cold water and one of hot water in the freezer at the same time. I don't know which froze first, but the hot water tray only had half sized icecubes.
Maybe I’m stupid, but I still don’t get it. Please help me our here if you would. Thank you.
Let’s say I make a canoe out of solid ice and a canoe out of solid concrete, then drill a 6” hole in the bottom of each.
Which one will meet with the bottom of the lake sooner?
The ice canoe will still float. The concrete one will sink faster than....well, a concrete boat with a 6” hole in the hull. I am aware of boats using concrete hulls.
Remember those little ice cubes that had hole in the middle? They floated.
I’m not trying to be sarcastic or mean, just realistic, IMHO. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Phooey. It is not the case with other molecules.
yitbos
After reading all that, I’m now more convinced that it DOES have something to do with the lopsidedness of the water molecule and the easier crytalization of a more uniform molecular array. What other molecule has the unique property of water that it is expands to reduce density when frozen?
After reading all that, I’m now more convinced that it DOES have something to do with the lopsidedness of the water molecule and the easier crytalization of a more uniform molecular array. What other molecule has the unique property of water that it expands to reduce density when frozen?
Oh yeah, typical, blame Heisenberg again. He’s the reason Schoedinger’s cat ran away too I suppose!
Ice floats because it is expanded water, so a block of ice is less dense than the same volume of water. No matter how many holes you drill in ice (or wood or cork or other materials less dense than water) it will float.
Concrete canoes are very thin-walled boats that have a large interior volume of air - so they are overall less dense than the water they displace. If you bore a hole and replace the air with water, it will be overall more dense than the water and it will sink.
You will note that it was the Titanic that sank not the iceberg in that collision a century ago..The Titanic replaced its volume of air with water and the iceberg was still ice.
It all makes sense now, thank you. I sincerely hope you didn’t think I was being argumentative.
Thanks again for your patience.
Didn't think any such thing. I can easily understand how it might be confusing. I had the good fortune to be forced to learn about all this stuff when I was an engineering student.
You should have seen all the trouble I had with physics...(and calculus and strength of materials...etc.)
Actually, it’s because Cold is attracted to Hot (opposites attract, remember?). The hotter it is, the more cold is attracted to it, causing it to ‘freeze’ first.
(/s) : )
“Aristotle agonized over it fruitlessly in the fourth century BC”
Oh yeah? Where the heck did he get ICE CUBES or even ICE CUBE TRAYS , or even a Freezer ? And was it a Frigidaire or Amana ?
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