Wednesday, Jun. 25, 2003 - 2:40 pm
Conversations at our dinner table last night involved the following data I collected from Google from various sites that I should be citing here..but, I�m not:
The strongest muscle in your body search on Google gives me these answers:
1.) The masseter (muscle in your jaw).
2.) The uterus (in females, obviously).
3.) The gluteus maximus.
Urinary and Anal Incontinence (Incapacity to hold):
Urinary: This type of incontinence is caused by the stress and strain put on the muscles lining the floor of the pelvic cavity. The muscles, known as pelvic floor muscles, are attached to the pelvic bone and act like a hammock, holding in your pelvic organs and helping the bladder hold urine. When they weaken, the result is a loss of bladder control and embarrassing accidents that can occur at random and inopportune moments.
But the situation doesn't have to be tolerated because in most cases, these muscles can be retrained to work properly. This is accomplished by a serious of simple exercises, called Kegel exercises, repeated five or six times a day.
Anal: Anal sphincters are the muscles that coordinate bowel movements. They may be damaged for various reasons, including vaginal deliveries or extensive anal intercourse. Although the surgery typically corrects the problem initially, the problems gradually come back, so patients can have recurrent or new difficulties a few years later.
"[A]lthough most patients improve after the procedure, [bowel control] is rarely perfect," the authors write. Their study involved questionnaires and telephone interviews with patients who had had repair surgeries at least five years previously. The surgery in the study, called overlapping anterior anal-sphincter repair, is one way to correct the damage for severe symptoms.
Thus proving that the kegel muscles are stronger than the sphincter.
Experimental evidence seems to indicate that hot water does indeed freeze faster than cold water - this seems counterintuitive and there are a number of different explanations for the phenomenon. I don�t think anyone has found a grant to study it in depth so there are not clear answers to the cause.
Thermal contact argument
The hot water melts the ice under the tray and when it refreezes there is more surface area in contact with the ice tray. Air is a reasonably bad conductor of heat - water or ice are much better so if you have a solid layer of ice touching the ice tray any heat is conducted away more quickly. Even when the hot water cools to the cold water temperature it will retain this layer of ice and so freeze solid more quickly. In order to see if this is true it would be necessary to put the tray in a completely frost free freezer or somehow hang it from the top!
Reduction in volume argument
People who have done experiments on this argue against the case that the volume of the hot water is reduced by evaporation, and therefore less hot water freezes more quickly than more cold water. It is one argument but it isn�t popular.
Convection current argument
From a New Scientist Last Word question, someone who did the experiment claimed that the longest time for freezing was at 5C while the shortest time for freezing was at 35C. This is an extract:
�The rate of heat loss from the upper surface is proportional to the temperature. If the surface can be kept at a higher temperature than the bulk of the liquid, then the rate of heat loss will be greater than from water with the same average temperature, uniformly distributed. If the water is in a tall metal can rather than in a flat dish, the paradoxical effect disappears. We argued that temperature gradients in the tall can were short-circuited by heat conduction through its metal walls.�
http://www.newscientist.com/lastword/article.jsp?id=lw236
Effectively the strong convection currents in the warmer water allow the warmer interior water to be brought to the surface and so these molecules lose their heat. In the cold water the ice will form a crust over the surface - in hot water the convection currents bring the heat to the surface and so no crust forms. Therefore hot water loses its heat by convection, conduction and radiation, while cold water loses its heat only by conduction and radiation. Once the convection currents are in motion they do not stop quickly so the continued motion allows the hot water to �over take� the colder water.
Contaminants argument
Hot water has less dissolved gases - if the temperature difference is not great then the lack of gases, which reduce the rate of freezing, will allow the hot water to freeze more quickly.
You can take your pick which you believe! Personally I think there is a weight of evidence that it is true and hot water does freeze more quickly than cold water and I suspect that all the reasons above may have a role to play.
How do fish breathe? http://papa.essortment.com/howdofishbrea_rlyl.htm
I know you must think I�m crazy. Just so you know, so does my Mom, b/c I sent her the lyrics to Elton John�s, �Tiny Dancer�, and she responded by saying:
�Its official you have lost your mind.�
