Supercooled water

While watching a documentary on the aircrash investigation into the now famous Roselawn incident, I came across a natural phenomenon that I was not aware of, but was living with for a while now - supercooled water. It has been a long time since I learned of chemical properties of basic materials like water and was immediately enthralled.

Essentially supercooling is the process of taking liquids to temperatures that are lower than it's freezing point. How is that possible? Wouldn't it become solid? That's when I read that all solidifications need crystallization agents! Water ice needs a small non-water particle to form ice. What happens otherwise is, water continues to be supercooled until it touches such a agent - precisely how it happens during a freezing rain. In the case of freezing rain however, it happens because the ground temperature is much lower (like a snow storm blew over the previous week) and there is a pressure system that moves hot air in the higher atmospheres and causes rain, and that rain water becomes supercooled as it approaches land and then, the glaze that looks like frozen snow (ice) and can bring down power lines, trees etc!

In the case of an aircraft flying through freezing rain, it immediately forms a glaze around the protruding wings, completely changing the aerodynamics. This was apparently unknown until the Roselawn incident and has since be studied well.

And, the reason why I thought this was so cool is because the humble slush that I so much like during summer is actually supercooled water! I always thought its crushed ice, but no! There is this perfect YouTube video that explains what I mean by cool! (pun intended).