Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. New simulations show ice stays slippery in deep cold because its crystal structure breaks down under motion, not because it melts.

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 ...

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 original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. 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 ...

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 ...

Researchers in Germany have challenged a 200-year-old assumption and revealed that pressure and friction are not responsible for making ice slippery, contrary to what has long been taught in physics ...

[CLIP: Skates cut across the ice at an ice rink, and music plays in the background.] Kendra Pierre-Louis: So we’re out here today in lower Manhattan ice-skating. There are lots of kids skating around, ...

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, scientists have debated why ice stays slippery, even well below freezing.