[katieHaylor (OP)]

Mike asks:

When the outside temperature is hovering around the freezing mark, the condensation or dew on my automobile windshield is in a liquid state. But if I wipe the windshield, the liquid water changes to ice. Why is that?

Can you help Mike with this one?

[Hayseed]

The surface can absorb the latent heat of the liquid, when you spread the beads out.

[alancalverd]

If undisturbed, supercooled liquid water can form all sorts of metastable short-range polymers that do not crystallise at 0 deg C. It doesn't take much to precipitate crystallisation and the spread can be very rapid, producing feather patterns on a previously-wiped surface in a matter of seconds from a small starting point.

[simplex]

A thin layer of water freezes more quickly that a thick layer.

[Paul25]

The combination of wind chill and less volume of water to freeze