What Is the Mpemba Effect on Water

Have you ever wondered whether hot water really can freeze more quickly than cold water and if so, how it works? If so, then you need to know about the Mpemba Effect. Simply stated, the Mpemba Effect is the name given to the phenomenon when hot water freezes more quickly than cold water. Although the effect has been observed for centuries, it was not published as a scientific observation until 1968. The Mpemba Effect is named for  Erasto Mpemba, a  Tanzanian schoolboy who claimed ice cream would freeze faster if it was heated before being frozen. Although his peers ridiculed him, Mpemba got the last laugh when his instructor performed an experiment, demonstrating the effect. Mpemba and headmaster  Dr. Denis G. Osborne  observed the time required for freezing to start took longest if the initial water temperature was 25  Ã‚ °C and took much less time if the starting temperature was 90  Ã‚ °C.   Reasons Why the Mpemba Effect Happens Scientists arent completely certain why hot water sometimes freezes more quickly than cold water. The Mpemba Effect is not always seen -- often cold water freezes before hot water. The explanation for the effect likely has to do with impurities in the water, which serve as nucleation sites for freezing. Other factors may include: an effect from the evaporation of hot waterincreased convection in hot waterincreased tendency of cold water to supercool compared with hot waterpotential different amounts of dissolved gases in cold water compared with hot watereffect of frost formation -- hot water tends to freeze from the bottom while cold water tends to freeze from the topthermal conductivity, causing the container of hot water to melt through insulating ice in the freezer, potentially exposing the container to a colder layer beneath the ice Learn more about the freezing point of water. Sources Burridge, Henry C. Questioning the Mpemba effect: hot water does not cool more quickly than cold, Scientific Reports volume 6, Paul F. Linden, Article number: 37665, November 24, 2016. Jeng, Monwhea (2006). Hot water can freeze faster than cold?!?. American Journal of Physics. 74 (6): 514–522. arXiv:physics/0512262. doi:10.1119/1.2186331 Jin, Jaehyeok; Goddard III, William A. (2015). Mechanisms Underlying the Mpemba Effect in Water from Molecular Dynamics Simulations. Journal of Physical Chemistry C. 119 (5): 2622–2629. doi:10.1021/jp511752n Tao, Yunwen; Zou, Wenli; Jia, Junteng; Li, Wei; Cremer, Dieter (2017). Different Ways of Hydrogen Bonding in Water - Why Does Warm Water Freeze Faster than Cold Water?. Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation. 13 (1): 55–76. doi:10.1021/acs.jctc.6b00735