So here’s what happened, I put water bottles inside my freezer, and looked like it was still liquid inside. But when I removed it, I saw it freezing from top to bottom (not completely frozen, but hardened). What exactly happened?
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It was metastable, and once you applied movement you kicked the molecules rearrangement. It was already at a freezing temp, but in a bracket where it could be liquid or solid. It lacked just a bit of freezing or push to definitely transition.
This phenomenon is called supercooling
To form an ice crystal the water require nucleation, something to kick start the ice forming process. This can be the water itself moving, or impurities in the water like minerals can also do that.
Because the water in your bottle is relatively pure, and the bottle is stagnant (water isn’t moving) under certain conditions the water in the bottle can cool to below the freezing point of water. This is called supercooling.
When you agitate the bottle it causes water crystals (ice) to form instantaneously
/u/DarkAlman covered this. In addition, you can actually do the reverse of this as well. Get water super heated and not boiling then then disturb the water and it explosively boils. Don’t attempt this as you can burn the hell out of yourself. Just youtube a video.
Supercooling, as others have said. I’ve had a similar thing happen when I left a bottle of water in my car during freezing temperatures. Pick up the bottle and give it a shake and watch it instantly turn to slush.
This happens every day in my fridge. The water bottles are supercooled because the thermostat is stuck. It’s an ‘86 marine fridge, so I’m not messing with it.
If you drink beer, this can happen quite often. You put your beer in the freezer. Take them out expecting to have a very cold beer: pour in the glass and it just turns into gooey ice. The higher than normal pressure inside the bottle lowers the freezing point. As soon as it’s in the glass under normal atmospheric pressure, it freezes.
Fun science experiment: if you want a soda slushy. Take a bottle of soda (bottle with a screw cap, not a can). Shake it up for 10-15 secs. Put it in the freezer for an hour and then pour into a glass. It will still be liquid in the bottle, but will freeze as you pour it.
The pressure in the bottle after shaking it stops it from Freezing for a short time, but it will freeze as it’s poured.
I have been trying to supercool water since a long time, but i keep failing. Its awesome that you got to observe it out of the blue
When water becomes ice, it forms crystals. These ice crystals are like any other crystal and can’t just grow anywhere, but instead require a so called “nucleation” point. This can be a tiny little particle or some other activity within the water (in this case). Ice will then form from said nucleation point.
With your bottle, it was below freezing point, but had no nucleation point and thus no ice. This is called super freezing. The way you removed it from the freezer caused a disturbance which resulted in the nucleation point being at the top of the bottle. From there on our all the water formed crystals towards the bottom.
It’s called “supercooling”. In short, its like a special trick that water can do when it’s really, really cold, and it can stay a liquid even when it’s supposed to be ice!
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