Letter: Letters : Remember Mpemba

From Norman Gardiner

Hyde, Cheshire

With reference to Charles Knight’s observations about the Mpemba effect
(Letters, 16 March, p 58), I wonder if Mpemba knows that his name has entered
the language and that scientists are still debating the question that he put to
Professor D.G. Osborne at Iringa School, Southern Tanzania almost 30 years
ago.

When I showed Knight’s letter to my wife she reminded me that she had typed
Professor Osborne’s original article “Mpemba’s Ice-cream” in Dar es Salaam those
many years ago.

• • •

Knight recommends N. E. Dorsey’s study “The Freezing of Supercooled
Water”. Readers should be warned that this extends to 80 pages.

0ut of modesty, perhaps, Knight did not mention his own book The Freezing
of Supercooled Liquids (1967). This I found excellent.

J. Jocelyn

Scottish Universities Research and Reactor Centre

East Kilbride