My video shows the phenomenon of “Snap-Freezing”: sometimes pure water (pretty pure, it’s distilled water) in a bottle will remain unfrozen at below 0℃, this is due to the lack of condensation nuclei in the bottle to allow the water to freeze. Then shaking the bottle creates tiny air bubbles that become condensation nuclei, and the water will immediately begin to freeze.

The operator had to strictly control the time the bottles were in the freezer; a shorter time would cause the water not to freeze or just produce small shards of ice, while a longer time would cause the water already to be frozen when the freezer door was opened. The freezing process was full of randomness and predicting how the water froze was quite difficult. This video shows some different ways of freezing water. Water has frozen like a snowflake, like pieces of paper or leaves, or completely frozen from top to bottom, and all of them have different freezing speeds. I think it’s very beautiful and worth our group torturing these bottles and freezers over and over again this week……

I attached a photo of the ice, which I think is very beautiful. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good record of the process, but took the photo after the ice was complete.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to my team members Abhishek Raut and Alexandr Vassilyev, who provided much assistance and suggestions on the filming.

Recording device: Sony ZVE10 Mirrorless Camera & Tamron 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di III-A VC VXD Lens for Sony E

Recording parameters: about 200mm, 1/125 sec, F10, ISO400-800