Comments on: A cooling hot drink

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:43:08 +0000

You cannot do the experiment with a tray of each in the freezer at the same time as one will affect the other!

By: S. Hussey

S. Hussey — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 17:13:28 +0000

responding to TDL
Here in New England where the winter cold can periodically be brutal, it is a truism that hot water pipes freeze (and burst) before the cold water pipes. This is true despite the fact that hot and cold pipes run parallel and with (by most codes) no more than two inches between them.
Whether the explanation is good or not I cannot say but I was told this is because the disparity in temp between the environment (or freezer) and the water is so much greater in the warm water that the dissipation of that heat energy creates a cascade effect, causing the hot water to reach environmental temp more rapidly than the cold water…which I guess, is lazy and feels like it has plenty of time. ??!!??!! Okay, I have my doubts, too.
But finally, the question–Does hot water make ice cubes quicker than cold–is an easy enough experiment isn’t it–one tray of each in the freezer at the same time…

By: ravi

ravi — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:41:08 +0000

I happened to work in an engineering firm where I was told that people working in forge shop use to take hot water to quench their thirst. I tried taking hot water to cold water during summer and I felt hot water was better than cold water.

By: not sure

not sure — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:21:49 +0000

I remember seeing this on Tomorrows World, back in the 70′s, they had an infra red camera and all that, they proved that it was more cooling to drink and hot drink rather than a cold one. But I am sure they said something along the lines of, if you drink a cold drink the body needs to work to warm the contents of the stomach back up and this expelling of energy made you hotter. That obviously wouldnae explain why a hot drink cooled you down though. But it defo has to be T, coffee doesnae do the same thing, I’m no a big T drinker I prefer coffee, but on a hot day you can’t beat a cup of T.

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 07:54:29 +0000

Hi Laura

What is “colling” hot water? Perhaps you meant cooling. There are lots of simple experiments to do with the rate of cooling of water on the web. Have a closer look using Google and search for “cooling water experiment”.

By: laura

laura — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 06:38:49 +0000

i am doing an experiment for year 8 science, i have to do some background research on my topic, i was wondering if you could help. My topic is colling hot water.

By: TDL

TDL — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:37:11 +0000

Interesting.

It reminded me of how frustrated I would get with the claim that it was faster to make ice cubes with hot water than with cold. Back then, I could only come up with one hypothesis as to why this might seem true–maybe if you put a tray of really hot water in your freezer, it tricks the thermostat to register a higher temperature and thus runs the compressor longer. It is possible that this feedback causes overall temperature to be colder for enough time to make the ice cubes freeze faster.

In general, however, I just think the claim is wrong. :)

TDL