We investigate the phenomenon of thermal spikes by simulating freezing at different scales. all vials remain in the liquid, supercooled state after 7 h. At -10°C, all vials froze, albeit with significant variability in nucleation time. For -20°C, this variability reduced strongly. For all frozen vials, exactly one spike corresponding to a temperature rise to the equilibrium freezing temperature was observed. Even in the case of the pallet (as shown in figures 3 and 4), one such rise was observed per vial, corresponding to its nucleation event. In the case of the experimental pallets, this rise took place early on, and at higher nucleation temperatures. This behavior indicates that the insertion of thermocouples into the vials affected the nucleation kinetics; i.e. additional nucleation sites enhanced the nucleation rate. Such behavior is commonly reported in literature with regard to pharmaceutical freeze-drying, and is in line with the experimental findings from the single vial cooling studies, as reported in section 2.3.1. To study this variability in detail, we investigate in Figure (g) the thermal evolution of one vial (green), considering the nucleation events of the other vials: all spikes in the thermal evolution profile are caused by nucleation events. The exothermic phase change affects neighboring vials that absorb this heat, which in turn either slows down their cooling or even heats them up temporarily.