Did you know that supercooled liquids need to heat up in order to freeze into a solid? It’s totally backwards, I know…but it’s true!

 

To supercool a liquid, you slowly and carefully bring down the temperature to below the normal freezing point and it’s still a liquid. We did this in our previous Instant Ice Experiment.Since the temperature is now below the freezing point, if you disturb the solution, it will need to heat up in order to go back up to the freezing point and to turn into a solid. When this happens, the solution gives off heat as it freezes. So instead of cold ice, you have hot ice.

Weird, isn’t it?