Thanks to Kurt for an interesting lesson in science (? :-)) on the net
.... we can truly tell that it is in between weekends when the major
subjects are Zambonis, hot water vs. cold water and bands!!  (No flames,
please!) ... Let me throw my physics two cents in ...  after consultation
with a colleague who claims to do research in the area of ice crystal
formation in the atmosphere....
 
the answer is .... it depends .....!  Actually it depends on the
situation.  True enough given equal masses to start, the hot water needs
to lose a lot more heat energy than the cold to freeze.  Now here is what
we do in lab classes:
 
If you take two metal trays with equal masses of hot and cold wadda ....
and you put them in a normal freezer which has a nice fluffy layer of airy
frost, the hot one will melt it forming a nice solid seal with the cold
surface of the freezer.  That enhances the heat transfer, in effect, the
cold water is semi-insulated from the freezer surface ... and that is the
main reason IN THAT CASE why hot freezes first!
 
If you repeat the experiment but hang the trays in the air the hot still
freezes first, but not by much.  The key mechanism here is evaporation
.... it is a heat loss mechanism and the hot water loses heat more rapidly
to start, losing mass to boot, then the two samples are near in
temperature and the originally hot water will barely win because from
there on, with less mass, it has less heat to lose to freeze.
 
Don't blame me for the explanation .... I believe the guy, but this is
coming from a guy who measures gamma ray energies for a living!
 
Of course, none of this is why the Zambonis spread hot water!  I think
that was correctly stated (by Kurt?) that the idea is to melt a bit of the
original surface and get a good bond, thereby not only resurfacing, but
getting rid of the low and high spots....
 
Anyone want a reference I am told I can get you one from the American
Journal of Physics (a journal devoted to teaching of physics) a while back
....
 
Finally, the hockey content .... can anyone out there tell me why the heck
the RPI team seems to be the most inconsistent team on the face of the
earth this season?  The season record reads like WWLLWWLWLWLWLWWLW
etc..... are they having injuries, mixing lines, meeting up and down
opponents, or .....   I expect them to lose at Vermont and win at
Dartmouth this weekend, which means they will probably due the opposite!!
 
Yours in physics and college hockey,
 
Tony Buffa
 
RPI '64 Physics
 
Univ of Illinois '66 and '69 also physics, but not the thermal kind