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[转帖]女中学生破解难题:热牛奶为何比冷牛奶先结冰

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发表于 2005-3-19 07:47:48 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式

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在许多版本的《十万个为什么》里都会提到同一个带有传奇色彩的故事:1963年,坦桑尼亚的一位初三学生在制作冰淇淋时意外发现,热牛奶比冷牛奶先结冰。这个奇怪的现象后来以这位学生的名字命名——姆潘巴。42年后,3位上海的女中学生在老师指导下向同龄人姆潘巴发起了挑战。
一拍即合 师生课题组诞生
叶莎莎、庾顺禧和董佳雯都是从《十万个为什么》中第一次认识姆潘巴的,当时她们还在读小学。“感觉姆潘巴现象很难解释,但却从来没有怀疑过。因为小时候总认为书上写的都不会错。”这位曾获得过世界工程师大会未来工程师论坛第二名、来自向明中学高三的叶莎莎笑着回忆起了童年。

向明中学高二年级的庾顺禧同样也是多年的科创高手,在去年的上海市第五届中学生科学课题研究评比中,她个人有3件作品获奖。其中的多种脚控式自翻乐谱架和便携式家用电器安全电压检测器都受到了广泛好评。去年参加比赛的过程中,小庾无意间看到了其他同学做的姆潘巴研究,“当时很受启发,也很感兴趣,心里就有些蠢蠢欲动了。”

高二女生董佳雯目前就读于上海中学。她从小就是个生活中的有心人。看奥运会击剑比赛,见到中国选手多次受到裁判的不公正待遇,不平之余,她想到去改进击剑裁判的积分系统;数码照相机因误操作丢失了不少珍贵照片,顿足之后,她想为数码照相机设计一个“回收站”,便于“亡羊补牢”。

向明中学的科技指导老师黄曾新对姆潘巴现象关注已久,在一次课外课题研究过程中,他与学生聊起了姆潘巴,当时就引起了叶莎莎、庾顺禧和董佳雯的强烈兴趣。为了解决同一个世界性难题,4位师生“一拍即合”,课题组在去年11月初宣告诞生。

双管齐下 设备资料均备齐

“兵马未动,粮草先行”,3位女生通过查阅网上资料,选择了课题实验用的一些必需设备。向明中学领导得知这个课题后给予了全力支持,价值不菲的12点自动温度记录仪、带有温度显示的无霜电冰箱、温度传感器和电子天平秤等设备都在第一时间全部到位,学校为此共耗资6000余元。

通过互联网,她们查阅了大量的资料,没有发现权威的解释。尤其令人不解的是,几乎每年都有人撰写论文研究姆潘巴现象,但没有人进行定量分析,都缺乏令人信服的科学实验数据,也没有强有力的理论依据。随后,3位同学分头尝试用家用冰箱做实验,结果令人兴奋:热水和冷水几乎同时结冰——没有出现姆潘巴现象。初次实验的结果使她们产生深入研究姆潘巴现象的欲望。

设备和资料的准备工作双管齐下后,终于万事俱备、只等“开工”了。

三色“神”杯 制作实验全靠它

“三色杯”,一种普通的冰淇淋。炎夏的消暑良方在寒冬里找到了用武之地,发挥出了“一杯三用”的“神”效。

第一用,做实验容器。走进工作室,好几只空的“三色杯”零乱地散落在桌子上,显眼的同时还散发出淡淡的奶香。“这几个月里每天都和‘三色杯’打交道,估计以后再也吃不下了。”叶莎莎说。除了体积略显庞大的“三色杯”外,小一号的冰淇淋杯子也很受欢迎。

第二用,做液体原料。因为姆潘巴是在做冰淇淋的时候发现问题的。为了充分接近当时的操作条件,用冰淇淋来做实验理所当然。但谁也没做过冰淇淋,需要哪些原材料呢?最简单的办法就是买来现成的冰淇淋,等它融化之后就能循环利用了。价钱实惠的“三色杯”便“脱颖而出”。

第三用,突破瓶颈。课题在进行到一半时遭遇瓶颈。虽然实验表明是否加糖和加糖后是否搅拌都会对液体冰点产生影响,从而改变其结冰速度。但糖对液体结冰的干扰程度还不够明显,直到“淀粉”这个重要变量的出现。发现淀粉也多亏了“三色杯”。由于同样温度同样重量的冰淇淋总比纯牛奶先结冰,这就引发了3位同学的思考。偶然的机会,她们在“三色杯”的配料说明中看到了“淀粉”,试了以后茅塞顿开:原来正是淀粉的存在大大加快了液体结冰的速度。

四人攻关 探寻为何先结冰

3位同学的大半个寒假都是在实验室与黄曾新老师共同度过的。超过100次的实验最终换来的是上万个宝贵的数据。开学前,实验阶段结束,课题组迎来更为枯燥的数据分析阶段。

虽然有先进的自动化仪器相助,但万千数据的整理、分析和总结还是颇为麻烦。暂且不论课题组精心绘制11张分析示意图花费了多少时间,只需节选论文的“数据记录分析”部分,其繁琐程度就可见一斑:冷、热纯牛奶对比;冷、热含糖牛奶对比;冷、热无糖、无淀粉牛奶对比;冷、热含糖、含淀粉牛奶对比;冷、热纯水对比;冷、热糖水对比;冷、热盐水对比;冷的纯水与纯牛奶对比;有糖冷、热淀粉与无糖冷、热淀粉对比……

严密的分析之后,结论水到渠成:同质同量同外部温度环境的情况下,姆潘巴现象不会出现,不可能热的液体先结冰。

此外,课题组还分析了姆潘巴现象之所以产生的3种可能情况:

冰箱温度并不均匀,如果姆潘巴将其冰盒正巧放在冷却管附近,甚至与冷却管相接触,完全有可能热牛奶比冷牛奶先结冰;

如果姆潘巴不喜欢吃甜,在冰淇淋中少放了糖,或者因为匆忙没来得及搅拌、糖粒沉在盒底形成固体,实验证明可先结冰;

姆潘巴自制的冰淇淋中不仅牛奶加糖,还加入了淀粉类物质,在其少放糖、少放牛奶时会先结冰。

共同愿望 想与姆潘巴联系

“希望我们这个课题研究结束后,姆潘巴现象可以不用再讨论了。”57岁的黄曾新老师豪言万丈。如果课题组的结论能得到专家的认可,那就意味着围绕姆潘巴现象长达42年的争论即告停止,这无疑是对黄老师和他3位得意门生的最好回报。

上海市第20届青少年科技创新大赛即将在本月拉开帷幕,凭借这个研究成果在比赛中力拔头筹是黄老师近期的另一个心愿。“我们的目标是要代表上海参加全国比赛,并且能进一步走向世界。目前看来很有希望。”黄老师的信心并非空穴来风,据他介绍,近几年有3篇关于姆潘巴现象的论文获得了上海乃至全国的大奖。“与获得上届全国科创大赛一等奖的文章相比,无论从研究方法、实验数据、最终结论等任何一个方面,我们的论文都要领先一步。”

“参加比赛当然想赢,那也是对自己实力的证明。就算成绩不够理想,我也没有遗憾。因为通过课题的研究,我在动手能力、思维水平、团队精神等多方面都有所提高,这些对我们今后迈向社会都是很有帮助的。”

3位同学还表达了一个共同的心愿:“如果有机会,想和姆潘巴本人取得联系,我们来共同做一次实验。”

  

姆潘巴现象的由来

1963年,坦桑尼亚的马干巴中学三年级的学生姆潘巴经常与同学们一起做冰淇淋吃。他们总是先把生牛奶煮沸,加入糖,等冷却后倒入冰格中放进冰箱冷冻。有一天,当姆潘巴做冰淇淋时,冰箱冷冻室内放冰格的空位已经所剩无几,一位同学为了抢在他前面,竟把生牛奶放入糖后立即放在冰格中送进了冰箱。姆潘巴只得急急忙忙把牛奶煮沸,放入糖,等不及冷却,立即把滚烫的牛奶倒入冰格送入冰箱。一个半小时后,姆潘巴发现热牛奶已经结成冰,而冷牛奶还是很稠的液体。

他去请教物理老师,为什么热牛奶反而比冷牛奶先冻结?老师的回答是:“你一定弄错了,这不可能。”后来,姆潘巴进高中后又向物理老师请教,得到的回答仍是:“你肯定错了。”当他继续与老师辩论时,老师讥讽他:“这是姆潘巴的物理问题。”一个极好的机会终于来到了,达累斯萨拉姆大学物理系主任奥斯玻恩博士访问该校,姆潘巴鼓足勇气向他提出问题:如果取两个相似的容器,放入等容积的水,一个处于35℃,另一个处于100℃,把放进冰箱,100℃的水却先结冰,为什么?奥斯玻恩博士的回答是:“我不知道,不过我保证在我回到达累斯萨拉姆之后亲自做这个实验。”结果,博士的实验和姆潘巴说的一样。
发表于 2005-3-21 23:59:24 | 显示全部楼层

[转帖]女中学生破解难题:热牛奶为何比冷牛奶先结冰


当媒体和政治介入科学的时候, ANY THING CAN HAPPEN。
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/hot_water.html
[Physics FAQ] - [Copyright]
Written Nov, 1998 by Monwhea Jeng (Momo),
Department of Physics, University of California


Can hot water freeze faster than cold water?
I. Yes -- a general explanation
II. History of the Mpemba Effect
III. More detailed explanations
IV. References
I. Yes -- a general explanation
Hot water can in fact freeze faster than cold water for a wide range of experimental conditions.  This phenomenon is extremely counter- intuitive, and surprising even to most scientists, but it is in fact real.  It has been seen and studied in numerous experiments.  While this phenomenon has been known for centuries, and was described by Aristotle, Bacon, and Descartes [1-3], it was not introduced to the modern scientific community until 1969, by a Tanzanian high school student named Mpemba.  Both the early scientific history of this effect, and the story of Mpemba';s rediscovery of it, are interesting in their own right -- Mpemba';s story in particular provides a dramatic parable against making snap judgements about what is impossible.  This is described separately below.
The phenomenon that hot water may freeze faster than cold is often called the Mpemba effect.  Because, no doubt, most readers are extremely skeptical at this point, we should begin by stating precisely what we mean by the Mpemba effect.  We start with two containers of water, which are identical in shape, and which hold identical amounts of water.  The only difference between the two is that the water in one is at a higher (uniform) temperature than the water in the other.  Now we cool both containers, using the exact same cooling process for each container.  Under some conditions the initially warmer water will freeze first.  If this occurs, we have seen the Mpemba effect.  Of course, the initially warmer water will not freeze before the initially cooler water for all initial conditions.  If the hot water starts at 99.9° C, and the cold water at 0.01° C, then clearly under those circumstances, the initially cooler water will freeze first.  However, under some conditions the initially warmer water will freeze first -- if that happens, you have seen the Mpemba effect.  But you will not see the Mpemba effect for just any initial temperatures, container shapes, or cooling conditions.
This seems impossible, right? Many sharp readers may have already come up with a common proof that the Mpemba effect is impossible.  The proof usually goes something like this.  Say that the initially cooler water starts at 30° C and takes 10 minutes to freeze, while the initially warmer water starts out at 70° C.  Now the initially warmer water has to spend some time cooling to get to get down to 30° C, and after that, it';s going to take 10 more minutes to freeze.  So since the initially warmer water has to do everything that the initially cooler water has to do, plus a little more, it will take at least a little longer, right? What can be wrong with this proof?
What';s wrong with this proof is that it implicitly assumes that the water is characterized solely by a single number -- the average temperature.  But if other factors besides the average temperature are important, then when the initially warmer water has cooled to an average temperature of 30° C, it may look very different than the initially cooler water (at a uniform 30° C) did at the start.  Why? Because the water may have changed when it cooled down from a uniform 70° C to an average 30° C.  It could have less mass, less dissolved gas, or convection currents producing a non-uniform temperature distribution.  Or it could have changed the environment around the container in the refrigerator.  All four of these changes are conceivably important, and each will be considered separately below.  So the impossibility proof given above doesn';t work.  And in fact the Mpemba effect has been observed in a number of controlled experiments [5,7-14]
It is still not known exactly why this happens.  A number of possible explanations for the effect have been proposed, but so far the experiments do not show clearly which, if any, of the proposed mechanisms is the most important one.  While you will often hear confident claims that X is the cause of the Mpemba effect, such claims are usually based on guesswork, or on looking at the evidence in only a few papers and ignoring the rest.  Of course, there is nothing wrong with informed theoretical guesswork or being selective in which experimental results you trust -- the problem is that different people make different claims as to what X is.
Why hasn';t modern science answered this seemingly simple question about cooling water? The main problem is that the time it takes water to freeze is highly sensitive to a number of details in the experimental set- up, such as the shape and size of the container, the shape and size of the refrigeration unit, the gas and impurity content of the water, how the time of freezing is defined, and so on.  Because of this sensitivity, while experiments have generally agreed that the Mpemba effect occurs, they disagree over the conditions under which it occurs, and thus about why it occurs.  As Firth [7] wrote "There is a wealth of experimental variation in the problem so that any laboratory undertaking such investigations is guaranteed different results from all others."
So with the limited number of experiments done, often under very different conditions, none of the proposed mechanisms can be confidently proclaimed as "the" mechanism.  Above we described four ways in which the initially warmer water could have changed upon cooling to the initial temperature of the initially cooler water.  What follows below is a short description of the four related mechanisms that have been suggested to explain the Mpemba effect.  More ambitious readers can follow the links to more complete explanations of the mechanisms, as well as counter- arguments and experiments that the mechanisms cannot explain.  It seems likely that there is no one mechanism that explains the Mpemba effect for all circumstances, but that different mechanisms are important under different conditions.
Evaporation -- As the initially warmer water cools to the initial temperature of the initially cooler water, it may lose significant amounts of water to evaporation.  The reduced mass will make it easier for the water to cool and freeze.  Then the initially warmer water can freeze before the initially cooler water, but will make less ice.  Theoretical calculations have shown that evaporation can explain the Mpemba effect if you assume that the water loses heat solely through evaporation [11].  This explanation is solid, intuitive, and evaporation is undoubtedly important in most situations.  However, it is not the only mechanism.  Evaporation cannot explain experiments that were done in closed containers, where no mass was lost to evaporation [12].  And many scientists have claimed that evaporation alone is insufficient to explain their results [5,9,12].
Dissolved Gasses -- Hot water can hold less dissolved gas than cold water, and large amounts of gas escape upon boiling.  So the initially warmer water may have less dissolved gas than the initially cooler water.  It has been speculated that this changes the properties of the water in some way, perhaps making it easier to develop convection currents (and thus making it easier to cool), or decreasing the amount of heat required to freeze a unit mass of water, or changing the boiling point.  There are some experiments that favor this explanation [10,14], but no supporting theoretical calculations.
Convection -- As the water cools it will eventually develop convection currents and a non-uniform temperature distribution.  At most temperatures, density decreases with increasing temperature, and so the surface of the water will be warmer than the bottom -- this has been called a "hot top." Now if the water loses heat primarily through the surface, then water with a "hot top" will lose heat faster than we would expect based on its average temperature.  When the initially warmer water has cooled to an average temperature the same as the initial temperature of the initially cooler water, it will have a "hot top", and thus its rate of cooling will be faster than the rate of cooling of the initially cooler water at the same average temperature.  Got all that? You might want to read this paragraph again, paying careful distinction to the difference between initial temperature, average temperature, and temperature.  While experiments have seen the "hot top", and related convection currents, it is unknown whether convection can by itself explain the Mpemba effect.
Surroundings -- A final difference between the cooling of the two containers relates not to the water itself, but to the surrounding environment.  The initially warmer water may change the environment around it in some complex fashion, and thus affect the cooling process.  For example, if the container is sitting on a layer of frost which conducts heat poorly, the hot water may melt that layer of frost, and thus establish a better cooling system in the long run.  Obviously explanations like this are not very general, since most experiments are not done with containers sitting on layers of frost.
Finally, supercooling may be important to the effect.  Supercooling occurs when the water freezes not at 0° C, but at some lower temperature.  One experiment [12] found that the initially hot water would supercool less than the initially cold water.  This would mean that the initially warmer water might freeze first because it would freeze at a higher temperature than the initially cooler water.  If true, this would not fully explain the Mpemba effect, because we would still need to explain why initially warmer water supercools less than initially cooler water.
In short, hot water does freeze sooner than cold water under a wide range of circumstances.  It is not impossible, and has been seen to occur in a number of experiments.  However, despite claims often made by one source or another, there is no well-agreed explanation for how this phenomenon occurs.  Different mechanisms have been proposed, but the experimental evidence is inconclusive.  For those wishing to read more on the subject, Jearl Walker';s article in Scientific American [13] is very readable and has suggestions on how to do home experiments on the Mpemba effect, while the articles by Auerbach [12] and Wojciechowski [14] are two of the more modern papers on the effect.
II History of the Mpemba Effect
The fact that hot water freezes faster than cold has been known for many centuries.  The earliest reference to this phenomenon dates back to Aristotle in 300 B.C.  The phenomenon was later discussed in the medieval era, as European physicists struggled to come up with a theory of heat.  But by the 20th century the phenomenon was only known as common folklore, until it was reintroduced to the scientific community in 1969 by Mpemba, a Tanzanian high school student.  Since then, numerous experiments have confirmed the existence of the "Mpemba effect", but have not settled on any single explanation.
The earliest known reference to this phenomenon is by Aristotle, who wrote:
"The fact that water has previously been warmed contributes to its freezing quickly; for so it cools sooner.  Hence many people, when they want to cool hot water quickly, begin by putting it in the sun. . ." [1,4]
He wrote these words in support of a mistaken idea which he called antiperistasis.  Antiperistasis is defined as "the supposed increase in the intensity of a quality as a result of being surrounded by its contrary quality, for instance, the sudden heating of a warm body when surrounded by cold" [4].
Medieval scientists believed in Aristotle';s theory of antiperistasis, and also sought to explain it.  Not surprisingly, scientists in the 1400';s had trouble explaining how it worked, and could not even decide whether (as Aristotle claimed in support of antiperistasis), human bodies and bodies of water were hotter in the winter than in the summer [4].  Around 1461, the physicist Giovanni Marliani, in a debate over how objects cooled, said that he had confirmed that hot water froze faster than cold.  He said that he had taken four ounces of boiling water, and four ounces of non-heated water, placed them outside in similar containers on a cold winter day, and observed that the boiled water froze first.  Marliani was, however, unable to explain this occurrence [4].
Later, in the 1600';s, it was apparently common knowledge that hot water would freeze faster than cold.  In 1620 Bacon wrote "Water slightly warm is more easily frozen than quite cold" [2], while a little later Descartes claimed "Experience shows that water that has been kept for a long time on the fire freezes sooner than other water" [3].
In time, a modern theory of heat was developed, and the earlier observations of Aristotle, Marliani, and others were forgotten, perhaps because they seemed so contradictory to modern concepts of heat.  However, it was still known as folklore among many non-scientists in Canada [11], England [15-21], the food processing industry [23], and elsewhere.
It was not reintroduced to the scientific community until 1969, 500 years after Marliani';s experiment, and more than two millennia after Aristotle';s "Meteorologica I" [1].  The story of its rediscovery by a Tanzanian high school student named Mpemba is written up in the New Scientist [4].  The story provides a dramatic parable cautioning scientists and teachers against dismissing the observations of non-scientists and against making quick judgements about what is impossible.
In 1963, Mpemba was making ice cream at school, which he did by mixing boiling milk with sugar.  He was supposed to wait for the milk to cool before placing it the refrigerator, but in a rush to get scarce refrigerator space, put his milk in without cooling it.  To his surprise, he found that his hot milk froze into ice cream before that of other students.  He asked his physics teacher for an explanation, but was told that he must have been confused, since his observation was impossible.
Mpemba believed his teacher at the time.  But later that year he met a friend of his who made and sold ice cream in Tanga town.  His friend told Mpemba that when making ice cream, he put the hot liquids in the refrigerator to make them freeze faster.  Mpemba found that other ice cream sellers in Tanga had the same practice.
Later, when in high school, Mpemba learned Newton';s law of cooling, that describes how hot bodies are supposed to cool (under certain simplifying assumptions).  Mpemba asked his teacher why hot milk froze before cold milk when he put them in the freezer.  The teacher answered that Mpemba must have been confused.  When Mpemba kept arguing, the teacher said "All I can say is that is Mpemba';s physics and not the universal physics" and from then on, the teacher and the class would criticize Mpemba';s mistakes in mathematics and physics by saying "That is Mpemba';s mathematics" or "That is Mpemba';s physics." But when Mpemba later tried the experiment with hot and cold water in the biology laboratory of his school, he again found that the hot water froze sooner.
Earlier, Dr Osborne, a professor of physics, had visited Mpemba';s high school.  Mpemba had asked him to explain why hot water would freeze before cold water.  Dr Osborne said that he could not think of any explanation, but would try the experiment later.  When back in his laboratory, he asked a young technician to test Mpemba';s claim.  The technician later reported that the hot water froze first, and said "But we';ll keep on repeating the experiment until we get the right result." However, repeated tests gave the same result, and in 1969 Mpemba and Osborne wrote up their results [5].
In the same year, in one of the coincidences so common in science, Dr Kell independently wrote a paper on hot water freezing sooner than cold water.  Kell showed that if one assumed that the water cooled primarily by evaporation, and maintained a uniform temperature, the hot water would lose enough mass to freeze first [11].  Kell thus argued that the phenomenon (then a common urban legend in Canada) was real and could be explained by evaporation.  However, he was unaware of Osborne';s experiments, which had measured the mass lost to evaporation and found it insufficient to explain the effect.  Subsequent experiments were done with water in a closed container, eliminating the effects of evaporation, and still found that the hot water froze first [14].
Subsequent discussion of the effect has been inconclusive.  While quite a few experiments have replicated the effect [4,6-13], there has been no consensus on what causes the effect.  The different possible explanations are discussed above.  The effect has repeatedly a topic of heated discussion in the "New Scientist", a popular science magazine.  The letters have revealed that the effect was known by laypersons around the world long before 1969.  Today, there is still no well-agreed explanation of the Mpemba effect.
III More detailed explanations
Evaporation
One explanation of the effect is that as the hot water cools, it loses mass to evaporation.  With less mass, the liquid has to lose less heat to cool, and so it cools faster.  With this explanation, the hot water freezes first, but only because there';s less of it to freeze.  Calculations done by Kell in 1969 [11] showed that if the water cooled solely by evaporation, and maintained a uniform temperature, the warmer water would freeze before the cooler water.
This explanation is solid, intuitive, and undoubtedly contributes to the Mpemba effect in most physical situations.  However, many people have incorrectly assumed that it is therefore "the" explanation for the Mpemba effect.  That is, they assume that the only reason hot water can freeze faster than cold is because of evaporation, and that all experimental results can be explained by the calculations in Kell';s article.  However, the experiments currently do not bear out this belief.  While experiments show evaporation to be important [13], they do not show that it is the only mechanism behind the Mpemba effect.  A number of experimenters have argued that evaporation alone is insufficient to explain their results [5,9,12] -- in particular, the original experiment by Mpemba and Osborne measured the mass lost to evaporation, and found it substantially less that the amount predicted by Kell';s calculations [5,9].  And most convincingly, an experiment by Wojciechowski observed the Mpemba effect in a closed container, where no mass was lost to evaporation.
Dissolved Gasses
Another explanation argues that the dissolved gas usually present in water is expelled from the initially hot water, and that this changes the properties of the water in some way that explains the effect.  It has been argued that the lack of dissolved gas may change the ability of the water to conduct heat, or change the amount of heat needed to freeze a unit mass of water, or change the freezing point of the water by some significant amount.  It is certainly true that hot water holds less dissolved gas than cold water, and that boiled water expels most dissolved gas.  The question is whether this can significantly affect the properties of water in a way that explains the Mpemba effect.  As far as I know, there is no theoretical work supporting this explanation for the Mpemba effect.
Indirect support can be found in two experiments that saw the Mpemba effect in normal water which held dissolved gasses, but failed to see it when using degassed water [10,14].  However, an attempt to measure the dependence of the enthalpy of freezing on the initial temperature and gas content of the water was inconclusive [14].
One problem with this explanation is that many experiments pre-boiled both the initially hot and initially cold water, precisely to eliminate the effect of dissolved gasses, and yet they still saw the effect [5,13].  Two somewhat unsystematic experiments found that varying the gas content of the water made no substantial difference to the Mpemba effect [9,12].
Convection
It has also been proposed that the Mpemba effect can be explained by the fact that the temperature of the water becomes non-uniform.  As the water cools, temperature gradients and convection currents will develop.  For most temperatures, the density of water decreases as the temperature increases.  So over time, as water cools we will develop a "hot top" -- the surface of the water will be warmer than the average temperature of the water, or the water at the bottom of the container.  If the water loses heat primarily through the surface, then this means that the water should lose heat faster than one would expect based just on looking at the average temperature of the water.  And for a given average temperature, the heat loss should be greater the more inhomogeous the temperature distribution is (that is, the greater the range of the temperatures seen as we go from the top to the bottom).
How does this explain the Mpemba effect? Well, the initially hot water will cool rapidly, and quickly develop convection currents and so the temperature of the water will vary greatly from the top of the water to the bottom.  On the other hand, the initially cool water will have a slower rate of cooling, and will thus be slower to develop significant convection currents.  Thus, if we compare the initially hot water and initially cold water at the same average temperature, it seems reasonable to believe that the initially hot water will have greater convection currents, and thus have a faster rate of cooling.  To consider a concrete example, suppose that the initially hot water starts at 70° C, and the initially cold water starts at 30° C.  When the initially cold water is at an average 30° C, it is also a uniform 30° C.  However, when the initially hot water reaches an average 30° C, the surface of the water is probably much warmer than 30° C, and it will thus lose heat faster than the initially cold water for the same average temperature.  Got that? This explanation is pretty confusing, so you might want to go back and read the last two paragraphs again, paying careful attention to the difference between initial temperature, average temperature, and surface temperature.
At any rate, if the above argument is right, then when we plot the average temperature versus time for both the initially hot and initially cold water, then for some average temperatures the initially hot water will be cooling faster than the initially cold water.  So the cooling curve of the initially hot water will not simply reproduce the cooling curve of the initially cold water, but will drop faster when in the same temperature range.
This shows that the initially hot water goes faster, but of course it also has farther to go.  So whether it actually finishes first (that is, reaches 0° C first), is not clear from the above discussion.  To know which one finishes first would require theoretical modelling of the convection currents (hopefully for a range of container shapes and sizes), which has not been done.  So convection alone may be able to explain the Mpemba effect, but whether it actually does is not currently known.  Experiments on the Mpemba effect have often reported a "hot top" [5,8,10], as we would expect.  Experiments have been done that looked at the convection currents of freezing water [27,28], but their implications for the Mpemba effect are not entirely clear.
It should also be noted that the density of water reaches a maximum at four° C.  So below four° C, the density of water actually decreases with decreasing temperature, and we will get a "cold top." This makes the situation even more complicated.
Surroundings
The initially hot water may change the environment around it in some way that makes it cool faster later on.  One experiment reported significant changes in the data simply upon changing the size of the freezer that the container sat in [7].  So conceivably it is important not just to know about the water and the container, but about the environment around it.
For example, one explanation for the Mpemba effect is that if the container is resting on a thin layer of frost, than the container holding the cold water will simply sit on the surface of the frost, while the container with the hot water will melt the frost, and then be sitting on the bottom of the freezer.  The hot water will then have better thermal contact with the cooling systems.  If the melted frost refreezes into an ice bridge between the freezer and the container, the thermal contact may be even better.
Obviously, even if this argument is true, it has fairly limited utility, since most scientific experiments are careful enough not to rest the container on a layer of frost in a freezer, but instead place the container on a thermal insulator, or in a cooling bath.  So while this proposed mechanism may or may not have some relevance to some home experiments, it';s irrelevant for most published results.
Supercooling
Finally, supercooling may be important to the effect.  Supercooling occurs when water freezes not at 0° C, but at some lower temperature.  This happens because the statement that "water freezes at 0° C" is a statement about the lowest energy state of the water -- at less than 0° C, the water molecules "want" to be arranged as an ice crystal.  This means that they will stop zooming around randomly as a liquid, and instead form a solid ice lattice.  However, they don';t know how to form themselves as an ice lattice, but need some little irregularity or nucleation site to tell them how to rearrange themselves.  Sometimes, when water is cooled below 0° C, the water will not see a nucleation site for some time, and then water will cool below 0° C without freezing.  This happens quite often.  One experiment found that the initially hot water would supercool only a little (say to about -2° C), while the initially cold water would supercool more (to around -8° C) [12].  If true, this could explain the Mpemba effect because the initially cold water would need to "do more work" -- that is, get colder -- in order to freeze.
However, this also cannot be considered "the" sole explanation of the Mpemba effect.  First of all, as far as I know, this result has not been independently confirmed.  The experiment described above [12] only had a limited number of trials, so the results found could have been a statistical fluke.
Second, even if the results are true, they do not fully explain the Mpemba effect, but replace one mystery with another.  Why should initially hot water supercool more than initially cold water? After all, once the water has cooled to the lower temperature, one would generally expect that the water would not "remember" what temperature it used to be.  One explanation is that the initially hot water has less dissolved gas than the initially cold water, and that this affects its supercooling properties (see Dissolved Gasses for more on this).  The problem with this explanation is that one would expect that since the hot water has less dissolved gas, and thus less nucleation sites, it would supercool more, not less.  Another explanation is that when the initially hot water has cooled down to 0° C (or less), its temperature distribution throughout the container varies more than the initially cold water (see Convection for more on this).  Since temperature shear induces freezing [26], the initially hot water supercools less, and thus freezes sooner.
Third, this explanation cannot work in all of the experiments, because many of the experiments chose to look not at the time to form a complete block of ice, but the time for some part of the water to reach 0° C[7,10,13] (or perhaps the time for a thin layer of frost to form on the top [17]).  While [12] says that it is only a "true Mpemba effect" if the hot water freezes entirely first, other papers have defined the Mpemba effect differently.  Since the precise time of supercooling is inherently unpredictable (see [26], e.g.), many experiments have chosen to measure not the time for the sample to actually become ice, but the time for which the sample';s equilibrium ground state is ice -- that is, the time when the top of the sample reached 0° C [7,10,13].  The supercooling argument does not apply to these experiments.
IV References
HISTORICAL
1.  Aristotle in E. W. Webster, "Meteorologica I", Oxford U. P., Oxford, 1923, pgs 348b--349a
2.  Bacon F 1620 Novum Organum Vol VIII of "The Works of Francis Bacon" 1869 ed. J Spedding, R. L. Ellis and D. D. Heath (New York) pp235, 337, quoted in T. S. Kuhn 1970 "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pg 16
3.  Descartes R 1637, "Les Meteores" 164 published with "Discours de la Methode" (Leyden: Ian Marie) 1637, quoted in "Oeuvres de Descartes" Vol. VI 1902 ed. Adam and Tannery (Paris: Leopold Cerf) pg 238 (trans. F. C. Frank)
4.  Clagett, Marshall, "Giovanni Marliani and Late Medieval Physics", AMS press, Inc., New York, 1967, pgs 72, 79, 94
EXPERIMENTS ON THE MPEMBA EFFECT
5.  Mpemba and Osborne, "Cool", Physics Education vol. 4, pgs 172--5 (1969)
6.  Ahtee, "Investigation into the Freezing of Liquids", Phys. Educ. vol. 4, pgs 379--80 (1969)
7.  I. Firth, "Cooler?", Phys. Educ. vol. 6, pgs 32--41 (1979)
8.  E. Deeson, "Cooler-lower down", Phys. Educ. vol. 6, pgs 42--44 (1971)
9.  Osborne, "Mind on Ice", Phys. Educ. vol. 14, pgs 414--17 (1979)
10.  M. Freeman, "Cooler Still", Phys. Educ. vol. 14, pgs 417--21 (1979)
11.  G.S. Kell, "The Freezing of Hot and Cold Water", American Journal of Physics, vol. 37, #5, pgs 564--5, (May 1969)
12.  D. Auerbach, "Supercooling and the Mpemba effect: When hot water freezes quicker than cold", American Journal of Physics, vol. 63, #10, pgs 882--5, (Oct 1995)
13.  J. Walker, "The Amateur Scientist", Scientific American, vol. 237, #3, pgs 246--7, (Sept. 1971)
14.  B. Wojciechowski, "Freezing of Aqueous Solutions Containing Gases", Cryst. Res. Technol., vol. 23, #7, pgs 843--8 (1988)
GENERAL DISCUSSION ON THE MPEMBA EFFECT
15.  New Scientist, vol. 42, #652, 5 June 1969, pg 515
16.  New Scientist, 2 Dec. 1995, pg 22
17.  New Scientist, vol. 42, #654, 19 June 1969, pgs 655--6
18.  New Scientist, vol. 43, #657, 10 July 1969, pgs 88--9
19.  New Scientist, vol. 43, #658, 17 July 1969, pgs 158--9
20.  New Scientist, vol. 43, #658, 25 Sept. 1969, pg 662
21.  New Scientist, vol. 44, #672, 23 Oct. 1969, pg 205
22.  New Scientist, vol. 45, #684, 15 Jan. 1970, pgs 125--6
23.  New Scientist, vol. 45, #686, 29 Jan. 1970, pgs 225--6
24.  New Scientist, 2 Dec. 1995, pg 57
25.  New Scientist, 16 Mar. 1996, pg 58
RELATED ARTICLES
26.  J. Elsker, "The Freezing of Supercooled Water", Journal of Molecular Structure, vol. 250, pgs 245--51 (1991)
27.  R.A. Brewster and B. Gebhart, "An experimental study of natural convection effects on downward freezing of pure water", Int. J. Heat Mass Trans. vol. 31, #2, pgs 331--48 (1988)
28.  R.S. Tankin and R. Farhadieh, "Effects of Thermal Convection currents on Formation of Ice", Int. J. Heat Mass Trans., vol. 14, pgs 953--61 (1971)
发表于 2005-3-22 17:08:56 | 显示全部楼层

[转帖]女中学生破解难题:热牛奶为何比冷牛奶先结冰

向姆潘巴致敬!
科学需要这种追根溯源、坚持己建的精神。
发表于 2005-3-22 21:06:52 | 显示全部楼层

[转帖]女中学生破解难题:热牛奶为何比冷牛奶先结冰

长学问了,小时候还没读过十万个为什么呢,什么时候补习一下
发表于 2005-3-24 01:39:44 | 显示全部楼层

[转帖]女中学生破解难题:热牛奶为何比冷牛奶先结冰

好大的洪水啊,可怕。。。
 楼主| 发表于 2005-3-24 07:35:30 | 显示全部楼层

[转帖]女中学生破解难题:热牛奶为何比冷牛奶先结冰

发这帖一方面因为和传热有关, 算是本行. 另外也是想说明搞科研不能闭门造车.
既然是世界难题, 这么多年会没有人想去"攻关"?
也不先调研一下, 就宣布解决了世界难题?
发表于 2005-3-24 14:00:46 | 显示全部楼层

[转帖]女中学生破解难题:热牛奶为何比冷牛奶先结冰

下面引用由anyone2005/03/24 07:35am 发表的内容:
发这帖一方面因为和传热有关, 算是本行. 另外也是想说明搞科研不能闭门造车.
既然是世界难题, 这么多年会没有人想去"攻关"?
也不先调研一下, 就宣布解决了世界难题?
有很多问题的确自己闭门研究了很长时间,等成果出来的时候网上一搜,发现已有很多相关的成果出来了,白干!
发表于 2005-3-24 20:41:38 | 显示全部楼层

[转帖]女中学生破解难题:热牛奶为何比冷牛奶先结冰

楼上说的有道理
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