Urban Legends and warm water.

[Louisa_Pierce@ne.3com.com]

Urban legends

I thought I'd post a note on warm water during the winter months.  I'm sure
everyone
who reads Ride Camp and who live in cold weather climates already  know how
important it is to make sure your horse drinks water in the winter months.  And
I'm sure
most of you already warm your horses water for them.  But I had to post this
because of
Urban Legends that Warm Water freezes faster then cold water.

I recently moved to a new barn.  For the past 12 or so years I have always given
my horse
warm water to drink in the winter months.  But some of the people at my barn
(including the
owners of the barn) look at me like I have 3 heads, and they all say the same
thing
"don't you know warm water freezes faster then cold" ?

This aggravates me to no end.  For one thing, that statement makes no common
scenes at all.
These people just go around believing urban legends.  So I did some research and
I found out
where this quack of a statement came from...and if your all wondering I will
share it with you.

Back when Refrigerators were invented, cocktail and dinner parties became very
popular..  People
were busy hosting parties and serving drinks, but they needed ice cube for their
7&7s, they just
could not keep enough ice cubes per party.

So they found out that if you put a cold ice cube tray in the freezer and also
put a hot ice cub tray
in the freezer, the hot tray will freeze faster then the cold tray.  The reason
this is simple.  Your
freezer works at a temp at around 40 degrees (depending on your likes).  If you
put a 40ish degree
ice cube tray in the 40 degree freezer, it will take about 1.5hrs for your
freezer to freeze it.

BUT.. if you put a hot tray....say at 70 degrees, the freezer now has to work
harder to cool down the
inside of the freezer, so the hot tray will freeze in about 45 minuets  This
also works with a hot potato,
or any other hot item you stick in the freezer.  So you can leave cold trays in
your freezer and toss
in a hot potato and your ice cubes will freez faster.  So this has nothing to do
with degree of the
water in the tray.

Hence this very werid statement that I seem to get on a daily basis :-)  So, go
ahead and give your
horses warm water if you like.  And if anyone tells you your nuts, you can tell
them what you learned
today.

Louisa and Sultan in Mass.