The hot water tray because some of the water evaporates, and it takes less time to freeze.
The water on the tray will evaporate faster - more exposed surface.
Yes, this is a physical change.
Two things: Water expands as it freezes which applies force to the inside of the ice cube tray, holding it in place. Most ice trays are plastic and semi-porus. Some of the water molecules find their way into these small pores and when they freeze, joining to the rest of the cube, it acts kind of like molecular velcro.
A very cold ice cube may appear to smoke, but actually what you are seeing is water vapor. The air around the ice cube is cooled by the cold ice cube, and when it cools, water vapor in the air condenses into fog.
Evaporation is faster in a flat tray.
Cold water. It doesn't have to cool as much as hot water does, thus it freezes faster. Under VERY specific labratory conditions, it can be made possible to have warmer water freeze faster, however, these conditions will not be present when you fill your ice tray. If you want ice, use cold water.
This is a matter of melting and freezing. When you touch the tray, the warmth from your finger quickly melts a bit of a ice and creates a thin layer of water between the tray and your finger. Since the tray is so cold, it quickly freezes that thing layer of water forming an icy bond between your finger and the tray.
Tray
When water freezes it expands and the only way it has to go in an ice tray is up.
The water on the tray will evaporate faster - more exposed surface.
Yes, this is a physical change.
Evaporation.
Because when it hits the cold tray it starts to set hard
cold water is best because it will freeze faster
Think about it this way... If you start out with hot water, it has to cool its freezing temperature before it will freeze. Somewhere along the process it will become the same temperature as "cold" water - whatever temperature you choose to define as "cold". It takes time to reach that "cold" temperature and from the point that it becomes cold until it freezes should be the same as it was for water that started out "cold". All else being equal, cold water will freeze faster than hot water. Notice that I said "all else being equal". There are situations where water that starts out hot may freeze faster than the cold water. As an example - if you fill two ice trays with water - one with cold water and one with hot - and stick them into the freezer, the hot tray will start melting any frost or ice it is placed on. As it does so, it provides better contact with a cold surface that will act as a heat sink as it cools down. Having formed this better contact, it will begin to cool through both conductive and convective heat transfer. The tray that started out cold but which has poor thermal contact with its surroundings mainly cools by convection. Because conductive heat transfer is usually faster than convective heat transfer, the initially hot tray may catch up to the temperature of the initially cold tray and then continue to cool faster because of the boost from conductive heat transfer. Notice that the conditions have to be right for this to occur - the hot tray has to be warm enough to do the melting and establish the good surface-to-surface contact for the conductive heat transfer; there has to be frost or ice for it to be melting, the cold tray can't be too cold or it will start freezing before the hot tray catches up; likewise, the hot tray can't be too hot or it won't catch up to the cold tray; the freezer can't have too much forced convection (fan blowing in the freezer) but rather be primarily natural convection; the cold tray can't be warm enough to melt the ice or frost like the hot tray.
soak in cold water.
If a liquid changes into a solid it freezes. When you place an ice cube tray with liquid water into the freezer, it will turn into a solid we call ice. If you take that solid ice out of the freezer and leave it on the counter, it will melt into a liquid once again.