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