When you step onto an icy sidewalk or push off on skis, the surface can seem to vanish beneath you. For more than a century, ...

For centuries, people believed ice was slippery because pressure and friction melted a thin film of water. But new research from Saarland University reveals that this long-standing explanation is ...

The reason we can gracefully glide on an ice-skating rink or clumsily slip on an icy sidewalk is that the surface of ice is coated by a thin watery layer. Scientists generally agree that this ...

It’s an oft-cited science “fact” that ice is slippery due to pressure or friction, but this explanation doesn’t explain why ice’s slippery behavior remains at temperatures where such melting isn’t ...