Thanks. I got hold of Shoemaker's Experimental Physical Chemistry (reading it after 10 years again), and this is how he describes it as well.

@Mithoron, that is the same thing as saying that enthalpy is a state function, which was already stated in the original post. As Sherlock Holmes would have said, "it is elementary my dear Watson".

Once I get Shoemaker's book, I will share the exact quote. Till then let us wait for other opinions which can be referenced. I mean we all know matter is made from atoms, yet we still find it written in textbooks :-) I feel you are bringing the DSC (differential scanning calorimetry) working principles in here. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_scanning_calorimetry

Interesting, but I never heard of this approach before. You mean T_initial is the same as T_final, eventually? Have you seen this written somewhere? I am in the field of chem for a while and searched scores of books but never saw this explanation.

What is your experimental set-up? You are freezing water and other salt solutions, please add some details. Are you stirring the system? Salt solutions should not freeze at zero degrees. I feel this is rather an uneven cooling issue.

Of course, you understand it. I was writing for the students (perhaps the original poster). They have tons of misconceptions regarding orbitals. You might enjoy the article "The nature of the chemical bond—1990: There are no such things as orbitals!" pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed067p280

Interestingly, just two days ago, I was discussing similar questions with physical chemists. Both explicitly said that orbital is nothing more than a probability density around a nucleus. The kinetic energy is no longer classical and hence the concept of trajectory, moving path or anything else related to orbitals is rather a misconception.