Competition: Royal Society Of Chemistry. The Mpemba Effect

[Zabo]

Win £1,000.00

It seems a simple enough question - yet it has baffled the best brains for at least 2,300 years.

• Aristotle agonized over it fruitlessly in the fourth century BC
• Roger Bacon in the 13th century used it to advocate the scientific method in his book Opus Majus
• Another Bacon, Francis, wrote in his 1620 Novum Organum, that "slightly tepid water freezes more easily than that which is utterly cold" but could not explain why
• Descartes was defeated by it in the 17th century AD
• Even perplexed 20th and 21st century scientists and intellectuals have swarmed over it without result

Now the Royal Society of Chemistry is offering £1000 to the person or team producing the best and most creative explanation of the phenomenon, known today as The Mpemba Effect.

Further details here:

http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2012/mpemba-effect-water-ice-hot.asp

 

[D.S.G.L Pasan]

We know water molecules.When we boil water upto 100'c the temperature of water molecules are increasing,molecules absorb thermal energy and increase their kinetic energy in them and expand the molecules.Its like increasing the gradient of a graph.So if we keep something on the top end of the graph it will reach the bottom quickly.But in water which has room temperature the thermal energy absorbed as well as the gaps inbetween molecules are comparatively smaller than the previous water sample.So this is like a graph of a very low gradient.As before if we keep something on the top end of the low gradient graph,the object will reach the bottom very slowly.So like that the thermal energy as well as the kinetic energy stored in water molecules of 100'c water sample is higher than the water sample with room temperature.So when water with high temperature is cooled the absorbed thermal energy and kinetic energy has to give back and contract the molecules.(the high gradient graph).So this function is occured faster in 100'c water(high gradient graph) than in water of room temperature.