Professional Documents
Culture Documents
o,g
F e a t u r e : l Vp e mb a e f f e c t
hotwaterfreeze
first?
Does
freezes
faster
thetimeofAristotle,
some
scientists
haveclaimed
thathotwater
thancold.
Since
phenomenon
PhilipBalll00ks
atcurrent
attempts
t0shedlightonthispuzllng
It soundslike the kind of questionyou would be dismayed to hear schoolchildrengetting wrong: which
takeslesstime to tieeze,cold or hot water?Common
senseand the lawso{ thcrmodynamicsappeartoinsist
that cold water must freezefirst. For example,Newton'slaw ofcooling statesthat the rate at which a body
cools is proportional to the temperature difference
betweenthe object and its surroundings.But, infact, it
doesseemasthoughhot watersometimes"overtakes"
cold asit cools.
Indeed,Aristotle, FrancisBacon and Rene Descartes
all claimed that hot water doesfreezemore quickly.
Erasto Mpemba, a secondary-school
studentin Tanzania,mayhavebccnunawareof theirclaims,but itwas
somethinghe alsoobservedin 1963.To make ice cream
for a schoolprojcct, he was told to boil milk and then
let it coolbefore puttingit in the reliigerator. But, fearful of losing his place, Mpemba put his mixture in the
fridge while itwas still hot. He found that it ftozc before
the other,cooledmL\tures.
Others have since claimed to have observedthis
"Mpemba effect" in their own experiments.Nevertheless,many scientistsfind it hard to acceptsuch a
seeminglycountedntuitive phenomenon.The problem
is that the effect is frustratinglyhard to reproduccsometimesit appears,and sometimesnot. In fact, noone hasagreedexactlyhow the experimentsshould be
conducted in the first place. And even if the Mpemba
P h y s l c sW o r l d A p r i i 2 0 0 6
shouldtakelesstime
to freeze
thanhot
water,butAistote
have
andotherssince
fo!ndthlsnotto be
thecase.
Phi'ipBallisa
sctence
wnteT
andjournalist
basedin London,
emailp.ball@
nalute.c0ra
19
r
: a S t ari e :
,ust desserts
TheMpembaetfect
is namedaftera
sec0ndary-scll00l
studentfrcm
Tanzania
whofound
thatanice-cream
mlfr!refrozequicker
whent wasst lhot.
effect
Many
findit
scientists
hardto accept
sucha
seeminglycounterintuitive
phenomenon
asthe
Mpembaeffect
1969 Osborne wrote about thc work with Mpemba ter to settlethe issueonce and for all by carryingout
(then at the College of African Wildlife Management expefiments?That tums outtobe surprisingll'difficult,
in Moshi) and published it in the journal Ph)slc-r not least becausethc statement"hot water fr eezcs
Education. Coincidentally. a physicistnamed George fasterthan cold" is ill-defined.In a recentpaper.Jeng
Kell at the National ResearchCouncil of Canadain suggestsa more precisewording (arXiv.org/abs/physics/
Ottawa reported the samephenomenonthat year in 0512262v1):
"There existsa set of initial parameters,
theAmeicqn Jour al ofPhysics.
and a pair oftemperatures,suchthatgiventwo bodiesof
These reports revealedthat the Mpemba effect was water identical in theseparameteff, and differing only
alreadyfamiliar in folk wisdom. Kell, hailing liom a in their temperatures,
the hot one will freezesooner."
countrywithample experienceoffreezingwater,stated
There are manysuchparametcrsthat could affectthe
that "somesaythata carshouldnot be washedwith hot rate offreezing, the most obviousincludingthe volume
water becausethewaterwill freezeon it more quickly and type ofwater used,the sizcand shapeof the conthao cold water will, or that a skzltingrink should tre taineIS,andthe temperatureofthe fridge.Thispresents
flooded wilh hot water becauseit will freeze more a significant challengelor the experimentalist,who in
quicklv". Mpcmba, mearwhile,pointed out that Thn- principlcwould haveto setup avastmultidimensional
zanianice-creanrmakcrs routinely lioze theirmixtures array of experimcnts involving contail1erswith differwhile theywerehot, becausethat wasa fastermethod. ent sizesand shapes,while independcntlyyaryingthe
Andwhen Mpemba'swork wasdcscribedin an article massesand gascontent of the water and the refriger
1n New Scientislin 1969,it prompted a rush of ar- ation methodused,in order to testfor thc cifcct.
ecdotcsabout food-freezingpracticesand hot-water
There is also the key problem of horvto dcfine the
pipesfreezingwhile cold onesdid not.
timc of freezing.Does this refer to the mon]entwhcn
Thosemaking suchclaimsarc in good company.In the first ice crystalsappear or to thc timc when the
his Meteorologicafrom about 350 BC. Aristotle wrote entire body ofliquid is frozen? "Both of thcsctimes can
thal "if water has been previouslyheated,this con- be very hard to obscrve,perhaps especiallyin a refrigtributes to the rapidity with which it treezes,for it cools erator," saysice specialistCharlcsKnight of the Namore quickly". The idea wasquestionedby the great tional Center for Atmospheric Rescarchin Boulder,
medievalchampionof experimcntationRogerBacon, Colorado,US.
but his namesakeFrancisassertcdin the 17thcentury
that "water a little warmed is morc easilyfrozen than Lookingfor clarity
that which is quite cold". FrancisBacon was deeply Thesecomplexiticspcrhapscxplainwhy the Mpemba
interestedin freezingand refrigeration he is saidto effect remainsa puzzleto this day.A number of scihave caught a fatal chill while conductingan experi- entistshave investigatedMpemba's claim, but thcir
ment on preserving a chicken by stuffing it with snow. resultsremaininconclusive.In1977.for example,Jearl
Around the sametime, Descartesmadecarefulobser- Walker reported in SciantficAmaican that he had obvations of thc freezingof water that enabled him to ser,'edthe time it took a beakerofwater to cool to 0'rC
identirythe Iiquid'sunusualdensitymaximurnat 4"C. fiom differentinitial temperaluresundcl variousconThcsc studiesconvincedhim that "water which has ditions. These testsprovided some clarification of tl.re
been kept hot for a long time freezesfaster than any effect (seefigure). But although Walker rcportcd that
other sort".
he couldreproducemostofhisresults,he stillobtained
But were all thesereportsjust the result of bad ex- large deviationsin some of them. "I have not been abie
perimental technique?Surelyit shouldbc a simplc mat- to rcsolvcthc controversy,"he said.
20
P h y s i c sW o r l d ' \ p|
2006
F e r r i r r r :M p e m b ae f f e c t
Further
testingrequired
Though it is not perhapsthe most hi-tech type of
In 1995GermanphysicistDavidAuerbachat the Max experiment, it is one that could help resolve a puzzle
Planck Institute for Fluid Dynamicsin Gottingen that has intrigued scientistsfor over two millennia.
lookedat the role ofsupercoolingin the Mpembaef- Any takers?
P n y . l c sW o r l d A 0 r 2 Q 0 6
2I