Scientists Offer £1,000 Prize for Answer to the Question: Why Does Hot Water Freeze Faster Than Cold?
It is the baffling question which has perplexed the world's greatest scientific minds and even eluded great thinkers like Aristotle. But now scientists have become so infuriated about the mystery of why hot water freezes faster than cold, that they have put up a cash reward to find the answer. The Royal Society of Chemistry has offered £1,000 for a member of the public to come up with a convincing explanation for the phenomenon, which has mystified humankind. The scientific problem, which has become known as the Mpemba effect, has also defeated Francis Bacon and René Descartes. The problem got its modern name in 1968, when Tanzanian student Erasto Mpemba posed the question to professors visiting his school. Mr Mpemba, who had been studying the problem for five years, had asked Professor Denis Osborne, of Dar es Salaam University: 'If you take two similar containers with equal volumes of water, one at 35C and the other at 100C, and put them in a refrigerator, the one that started at 100C freezes first. Why?' June 28, 2012 Copyright © 2012 Daily Mail
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