The water in the bottles which did not freeze overnight was "supercooled." Water normally freezes when it is cooled below 0 degrees Celsius, forming ice crystals. Ice crystals form more easily when they grow on existing ice crystals -- the water molecules like to pack themselves in place on a crystal that's already gotten started. It doesn't take much to start the crystallization process going -- a little piece of dust or other impurity in the water, or even a scratch on the bottle are sometimes all it takes to get ice crystals growing. The process of starting off a crystal is called "nucleation."
In the absence of impurities in the water and imperfections in the bottle, the water can get "stuck" in its liquid state as it cools off, even below its freezing point. We say this supercooled state is "metastable." The water will stay liquid until something comes along to nucleate crystal growth. A speck of dust, or a flake of frost from the screw-cap falling into the bottle are enough to get the freezing going, and the crystals will build on each other and spread through the water in the bottle. |