does warm water freeze faster than cool water?

Answer 1

No... warm water *cools* faster than cool water because the temperature difference (gradient) from your cooling medium is higher. That is, the warm water loses its thermal energy faster.

But which one freezes first? The cool water of course! It has a "head start" toward 0°, and the warm water will never overtake it and reach freezing first.

Try it-- put a bowl of warm water and a bowl of cool water (same volume, please) into a freezer and see which one freezes first.

Answer 2

On an actual experiment, Warm water (35.3 C) freezed slower than Cool water (21.4 C)
With the same cooling source, Warm water took an average of 115 minutes to freeze.
Cool water took an average of 84 minutes to freeze.
It took Warm water an average of 21 minutes to reach cool temperature and from that point it took 93 minutes to freeze instead of 84 minute that took Cool water to freeze.
Based on these results I conclude that warm water freezes slower than cool water. I observed that water cools down even slower when similar cooling source causes it to cool. The difference was almost 10 minutes.
I think this experiment is important in our lives because it shows how water helps control the Earth's climate and also helps organisms regulate their body temperature easier.

Answer 3

Yes, it does, but nobody can figure out why. When they tried it on Mythbusters they theorized that the warm water started air currents that made the temperature drop faster. However, it was just a guess.

If you want to chill something fast, Mythbusters to the rescue again. The fastest way to chill anything is to immerse it in ice water. Nothing else, including a fire extinguisher, works as well.

Answer 4

Yes. Your hot water pipes will freeze faster than your cold water do to a higher concentration of air, etc.

Answer 5

Yes it does, and Richard is quite wrong, the reason for this is well-understood and very well-documented; hotter water contains fewer dissolved gases than colder water, so it freezes faster based on basic physical common-sense properties!