My grandmother said warm water freezes before cold water. I thought that it may be true only because the warm water could lose more of its volume through evaporation. I am no longer sure.

   Aristotle touched on this phenomena. Sir Francis Bacon studied it. In 1969 a Tanzanian student named Erasto Mpemba rekindled the debate in New Scientist.

   Can hot water freeze faster than cold water?
   1998 by Monwhea Jeng
   Department of Physics, University of California

   "Not usually, but possibly under certain conditions" from Scientific American.

[ September 10, 2001: Message edited by: Paul ]