Did you know if you throw a bucket of boiling water into the air on a freezing day, it will freeze before it hits the ground. If you do the same with a bucket of cold water it won’t freeze and you are likely to get a bit wet. So does this prove that hot water freezes better than cold?
No actually, it has nothing to do with this. It is all to do with the fact that the boiling water is so close to turning into a gas that it breaks up into tiny, tiny droplets when it is thrown. The tiny droplets have a high surface area compared to their volume so the heat can be lost very quickly and the water can become ice crystals almost immediately.
Cold water on the other hand is more viscous. This kind of means it is stickier and this results in the cold water breaking into larger droplets when it is thrown in the air. Heat is lost more slowly due to their size and they are still liquid when they hit the ground.
Here is a video of the freezing in effec t- the water becomes a sort of powdering snow like substance almost as soon as it is thrown.
Wondering why cold water is more viscous? It's all to do with
the bonds than hold molecules of water together in a liquid.
These bonds can be broken when more energy in the form of heat
is present. So the bonds are much weaker in hot water compared
to cold. The process of a liquid becoming a gas involves so much
energy being present that these bonds get broken completely and
the individual molecules are no longer held together.
