from Marilyn Vos Savant's column:
Sunday's Column - December 19, 2010ask marilyn Marilyn vos Savant December 19, 2010 I am writing from a military base in Iraq. We are encouraged to drink a lot of water, and we keep our refrigerator-freezer filled with it. We’ve noticed that if you put a bottle in the freezer, the water sometimes remains a crystal-clear liquid. Yet when you take the bottle out, the water starts to freeze and then turns quickly into frozen mush. Why does this happen?
—John Parrott, Alabaster, Ala.
The phenomenon is called “supercooling.” Ordinarily, water freezes at 32°F, but if your bottled water is distilled or purified—and undisturbed for a while—it may not be able to crystallize into ice, even at a temperature below freezing. Yet move it, and enjoy what happens!