The answer

[Mr.Fitnah]

Which freezes faster hot water or cold.
Which freezes faster: hot or cold water? [VIDEO]

 

[Baruch Menachem]

42

And don't you forget it.

 

[American Horse]

Which freezes faster hot water or cold.
Which freezes faster: hot or cold water? [VIDEO]

The test is deceptive. In one case it's a test between hot and cold; in the experiment it's between cold and water brought to boiling. The boiling water vaporizes in the air and the cold water does not. Water vapor freezes quicker than water contained by surface tension (if that is an appropriate word).

Many years ago, when I was in the engineering department at Westinghouse Electric Corp, on a very cold day, a fellow engineer made the claim that hot water would freeze faster than cold. I believed that it couldn't because the hot water had more heat to lose than the cold, a greater distance to go to freeze.

We conducted the following test: we took two equal amounts of water, one raised to the temperature of coffee - hot water from a coffee vending machine dispensed into a paper cup; and water from a cold water tap - in equal amounts. We placed both at the same time on a window sill outside in very cold temperature, approximately 7 or 8 degrees F. The cold water froze much quicker than the hot.

 

[Mr.Fitnah]

Different conditions, different results, Beware bar tricks

 

[eagleseven]

Never believed that one...always made ice cubes with cold water.

 

[American Horse]

Never believed that one...always made ice cubes with cold water.

Exactly what it all boils down to.