In case you haven’t noticed, it is as cold in Canada (and soon some parts of the USA) as it gets at the South Pole at times:
The video author writes:
Woke up to a balmy -41C (-41.8°F) this morning in South Porcupine, ON. Thought I’d share what happens when you mix boiling water and a water gun and take it outside for a few shots.
Watch:
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I think it is incorrect to call it ‘hot water’; I’m thinking a better term needs to be used.
Also, my present experiment gently ‘agitates’ the surface of the water (my ice cube trays are outside in the wind!); this may have the effect of causing the ‘seed’ effect seen when a bottle of super-cooled water is disturbed and *then* the actual ice forms from the point of impact.
BTW, at the 58 min point I now have ice on the top of the ‘hot’ water ice tray. The water was only brought up to about 140 F or 60 C, not boiling. Fits the criteria for ‘hot water’ … no (now do you see the dilemma? “hot” is not very descriptive and perhaps misleading.)
The cold was at 55 deg F from the tap.
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re: meridional circulation vs. zonal.
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It was found that “zonal” epochs correspond to the periods of global warming and the meridional ones correspond to the periods of global cooling. (Lamb 1972; Lambeck 1980).
http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y2787e/y2787e03.htm
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According to the same UN study, we can use variations in length of day for the last 7 years to predict temperature trends for the next 7 years.
Interestingly, nobody seems to be doing that.
Jim, you keep working on that, and in the meantime I’ll get in touch with Mpemba to let him know there is some weighty ground breaking stuff happening out on Jim’s back step.
I think he knows; it is a special set of circumstances where his ‘effect’ is operative. Having said that, you might want to review this paper and perhaps bring it to his attention:
When does hot water freeze faster then cold water? A search for the Mpemba effect
This paper would seem to spell out the conditions under which the Mpemba effect can be observed repeatedly. This technique, however, does not seem to offer a realistic improvement in (a reduction of) the time required to *freeze* an ice cube tray given normal running hot and cold ‘tap’ water. 80 deg C water from a pan heated on the stove (as tap water is at/near 60 deg C is insufficient as determined in this paper) may allow deformation of the thermoplastic used for some ice cube trays (like mine for instance).
– – – – – – – –
Abstract:
It is possible to consistently observe hot water freezing faster than cold water under certain conditions. All conditions except the initial temperature of water specimens must be the same and remain so during cooling, and the cold water must supercool to a temperature significantly lower than the temperature to which the hot water supercools.
For hot water at an initial temperature of > = 80 °C and cold water at < = 20 °C, the cold water must supercool to a temperature of at least 5.5 °C, lower than the temperature to which hot water supercools. With these conditions satisfied, we observed initially hot water freezing before the initially cold water 28 times in 28 attempts.
If the cold water does not supercool, it will freeze before the hot water because it always cools to 0 °C first regardless of the initial temperatures.
– – – – – – – –
BTW, testing here at the 1 hr 15 min point shows the the ‘cold’ water tray to have more ice formed than the ‘hot’ water ice cube tray.
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Oops – link to the paper referred to in previous post:
“When does hot water freeze faster then cold water? A search for the Mpemba effect”
http://www.afanporsaber.es/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/When-does-hot-water-freeze-faster-then-cold-water-A-search-for-the-Mpemba-effect.pdf
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John F. Hultquist,
Thanks. I guess the burning straw was what I suspected — a prop. Interesting link, too, thanks for posting. #20 also has a good explanation.
Meanwhile the snow pack in the Pacific NW (US) is near record lows. Fairbanks is running 30-40 deg F above normal. And forest fires have already occurred in the Big Sur area of nor Cal. (during the their rainy season)
Just weather, I guess…..
So does boiling water. >:|
boydo3, I’ve also seen those alarmist and unfounded claims about the PacNW snowpack, but they’re actually not true.
You can see the actual data here:
http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nsa/index.html?region=Northwest&year=2014&month=1&day=5&units=e
Pointing out an individual city, especially one like Fairbanks, is just wrong. It is still well within norms for temperature, nothing unusual, nothing bizarre, nothing “weird”.
I live in the midlands of the UK , well away from the high winds on the coast area , this morning i was watching a spider spin its web on the outside of my window so there must be insects about , just opposite is a cherry tree , there are hundreds of pink blossom on it and the leaf buds are getting fat , below my window is a rose bush with one white rose still on it , i have the feeling that when the weather over the pond gets worse there will be huge numbers of climate refugees coming to our balmy little island . and people say global warming is a bad thing !!!! We have got it here and its lovely , more please !!!!
Happy freezing, dear Americans.
Is the polar vertex the counterclockwise whirlpool in the Northern Atlantic? See the current wind map:
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=-65.43,42.03,331
From the Extreme-Weather-Event-is-Proof-of-Global-Warming Department:
http://www.firstpost.com/world/us-braces-itself-for-record-breaking-cold-temperatures-1324427.html
Jim, I read your link; now re-read mine. Your 6 pages can be distilled (sic) into:
“Supercooling – Hot water tends to experience less of a supercooling effect than cold water. This makes it more likely to become solid when it reaches the freezing point of water.”
My link also shows that besides supercooling; evaporation, convection, dissolved Gases, and effect of the surroundings can come into play for the Mpemba Effect to take place.
Anyway it was interesting communicating with you.
Imagine taking a pee outside !
Ric Werme says: January 5, 2014 at 7:52 am “Believe nothing read or heard without verifying it yourself unless it is Weltanschauung congruent.” I went off to figure out what “Weltanschauung congruent” and gave up …”
UnScience or Non-Science? [ … ] Over 60 years ago, Bertrand Russell had a book published entitled “Unpopular Essays.” He described how he came about the title. In a preface to a prior work, he said that the work should be of interest to the general educated public. Critics took him to task and complained that certain passages were difficult to understand, implying he misled purchasers. He did not wish to be charged with this again. He fully admitted that certain passages in the new work may be difficult for some to understand. Thus, he cannot claim the essays are popular. If not popular, they must be unpopular.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/05/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-118/
Throwing containers of near boiling water/coffee into the air below -40 is also fun. Poof its gone.
FYI adding a little glycerin to the water makes more water (%) go farther. My son did a science fair project on it.
I have seen less productive uses of time. But none that look that fun! 😉
@Gail:
Might want to step back on that salt/health matter. They’re finding out that the link isn’t what they thought. I learned this some time back when giving up sodium did absolutely nothing for me – then I started doing some research.
Here’s a start: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt
Or just google “sodium blood pressure myth”. It’s not quite that simple. Kind of like CO2=warmer…
I live in Boston and we have had arctic temps until TODAY. I woke up to 55 degree weather. Arctic temps are headed our way again beginning tonight.
We got down to around -40C in Ottawa a few days back, too. This time of year always reminds me of one of my favourite Futurama quotes:
Leela: Fry, night lasts two weeks on the moon.
Moon Farmer: Yep, drops down to minus 173.
Fry: Celsius or Fahrenheit?
Moon Farmer: First one, then the other.
TonyG says:
January 6, 2014 at 11:21 am
@Gail:
Might want to step back on that salt/health matter….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Seems to be a KCl/NaCl balance thing at least for me. I knocked my blood pressure from 170/140 down to 122/73 (last check a couple minutes ago) with a complete change of diet. Given the side effects of blood pressure medicines and their expense I decided to try a change in diet, with careful monitoring first. It worked for me and has worked for some others but not all.
If I eat too much salt my hands go numb overnight and my BP sky rockets so I will continue watching my salt intake. Cutting out all the junk food containing high salt certainly is not going to hurt.
Please note as a kid and a young adult, I went to a doctor who ALWAYS prescribed a diet along with any medication so that has been my inclination through life. If my daily monitoring had not shown steady improvement I would be on BP medicine now. However the condition has not returned in almost ten years as long as I don’t cheat too much. And yes I continue to monitor my BP since it is a silent killer.
100% with you on the BP and dietary & lifestyle changes – definitely the better approach IMO. As for the salt – from what I’ve studied, it appears that about 1 in 5 people have a greater sensitivity and thus have that problem. So sorry you have to deal with it. If we ever get our NC WUWT meetup going, I’ll make sure to keep that in mind for anything I cook 🙂
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If it was super-cooled water then the straw may have served as the agitation to start the freeze.
(If I remember correctly the finger wasn’t removed until just before the straw cleared the water.)
I don’t know why the glass didn’t break. I didn’t notice any increase in volume. Water expands when it turns to ice.
If it was a super-saturated solution of some sort, as in #3, then perhaps some of the solute was in the straw and began the crystallization when the finger was removed and it dropped.
But I’m still guessing.
With regards to hot water sometimes freezing faster than colder water – I suspect that it is a combination of a number of things, super cooling of the water being the most important.
If you put a water in a freezer, especially a sugary drink, it might cool below the freezing pint but not freeze. Tapping it will lead to nucleation sites that cause the ice to form very quickly. Starting with a cold liquid will make it more likely to supercool as there will be little turbulence in the bottle due to the small difference in temperature between the bulk of the liquid and the surface.
While water should not have a memory, rapid cooling might make the water more turbulent even as it reaches the starting temperature of the cold sample, which leads to better conduction of heat to the surfaces from the middle of the sample as well as more likely to star nucleation of crystals.
@Robert – re: Hot vs cold water freezing. The way it was explained to me is that hot water is moving around more, so more of it is exposed on more surfaces, to the cold, hence why it freezes faster (think of saw dust burning).
Boy from Albany, during cooler Pacific ocean years (we have had a series of cooler neutral and La Nina episodes compared to El Nino events), it is typical that snow pack is reduced. What you are referring to is a weather pattern variation that has nothing to do with warming. Indeed, if we had been under the effects of a warmer El Nino episode, there would be greater snow pack in the Pacific Northwest.
Gunga Din says:
“I don’t know why the glass didn’t break. I didn’t notice any increase in volume. Water expands when it turns to ice.”
I had thought of that. Problem is, we can’t tell in the video if the ‘ice’ is cold or not.