[Danielle F.]

Fact of the Day: Hot water freezes faster than cold water​

Have you seen those videos where people toss boiling water out in the winter air and they freeze up afterwards? Interesting how it seems impossible, yet hot water freezes in cold atmospheres faster!

This may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s called the Mpemba effect.

This phenomenon was named after a Tanzanian teenager in the 1960s who discovered that homemade ice cream froze faster when it went into the freezer right after the mixture was boiled.

While scientists are still finding an explanation for this phenomenon, here are a couple of theories on why this happens:

Source: Sciencium/YouTube​