This is quite a simple little thought experiment.

i take a gallon bucket of almost freezing cold water and a gallon bucket of almost boiling water, i set them down on the floor a few feet appart. which gallon of water will reach room temperature first.

i personally beleive that the hot water will reach room temperature first because the release of heat will be quicker than the cold waters ability to absorb heat.

despite what i think, i cant convince my mum when shes filling the fish tanks up, she says im talking nonsense. i tell her to use warm water if she wants to complete the job quickly.

what do you think...

that is all

Off the top of my head I'd tend to agree with you. You have two situations here: heat flowing from air to cold water and heat flowing from water to air.

The rate at which the heat flows is proportional to the temperature difference; assuming room temperature is somewhere around 20 degrees Celsius that means the almost boiling water is 4 times as far from room temperature as the near freezing water. So clearly the temperature gradient is larger when it comes to the hot water.

Further, the constant of proportionality is a property of the material doing the transfering--it's called the thermal conductivity. The thermal conductivity of water is about 23 times higher than that of air (air is a pretty good insulator) so it's that much better at passing along heat than is air. In short, the air-to-cold-water transfer is hindered by the smaller temperature gradient and the (ultimately more important) much weaker ability of air to pass along its heat.

Far from a great analysis but if memory serves my soup would probably cool down before my bowl of ice cream melts. I'll vote with you.

Thanks,

ill make sure my mum reads that, bless her.
cheers

well i've not tried this experiment personally..but i vaguely remember hearing this before, and the conclusion was the same as yours (i.e. the hot water cools down quicker)..but to be honest, i dont know that for a fact.

p.s i assume you keep tropical fish?...if so..always best to put same temp. water back into tank rather than hot or cold. (trop fish are very sensitive to water temp fluctuations)..but then..i assume you already know that

Yep, your right, there tropical fish, but i add the water warm to the tank before i put the fish back in, and only when the temp has equalized. my mum puts cold water in and waits a good few hours before the temperature has equalised. i can do a fish tank in an hour, it takes her four.

cheers

I think it depends of the factors IN the room. For example, if the ac is on, then the hot water's temp will go down to the same temp as the room, but if the heat is on, then the cold water will go up faster to match the room temp.

As stated above, ambient temperature would be critical in an experiement of this nature. You need to expand on what controls would be in place.

Try it and see. As others have said , it must largely depend on the room temp. For example if the room temp was one degree below freezing then no matter how fast the hot water cooled down, it seems logical that the frozen water would get one degree warmer even faster. Even if only because it was absorbing some of the heat released by the cooling hot water. But perhaps not. As another said, It would also be influenced by whatever other heating and cooling mechanisms were influencing the room. To get a really valid result you might have to completely insulate the room from its surrounding environment. I also have read something about making cups of tea, where the end temp of the cup of tea differs if you add cold milk to boiling tea and allow to stand or if you allow both to stand for the same time and then add them. The greater the temp differential the faster the cooling rate, obviously.
A much greater unexplained mystery related to temp. differentials is, "Why do the British drink their beer warm?"

I agree with the rest.
Straight up, if all influencing factors are equal, hot beats cold.