Physicists have developed a new theoretical framework which unifies a wide array of seemingly unrelated "Mpemba effects": counterintuitive cases where systems driven further from equilibrium relax ...

Does hot water freeze faster than cold water? Aristotle may have been the first to tackle this question that later became known as the Mpemba effect. This phenomenon originally referred to the ...

The Mpemba effect, in which hot systems cool faster than cold ones under the same conditions, was first described by Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. In 1963 it was rediscovered by Tanzanian ...

Not every scoop of ice cream can be described as “fateful.” But a batch of ice cream Erasto Mpemba made as a teenager in Tanzania in 1963 made waves in physics that are still being felt nearly 60 ...

Decades after a Tanzanian teenager initiated study of the “Mpemba effect,” the effort to confirm or refute it is leading physicists toward new theories about how substances relax to equilibrium. It ...

It sounds like one of the easiest experiments possible: Take two cups of water: one hot, one cold. Place both in a freezer and note which one freezes first. Common sense suggests that the colder water ...

The story goes that in 1963, Tanzanian high school student Erasto Mpemba was making ice cream with his class when he impatiently put his sugar and milk concoction into the ice cream churner when it ...