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, ...

The journey to unravel the mysteries of ice’s slipperiness began with Michael Faraday’s groundbreaking proposal in the 1850s. Faraday suggested that a thin liquid water layer on the surface of ice was ...

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 ...

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 ...

For nearly two centuries, the world accepted a simple explanation for why ice makes us slip. According to physics textbooks, pressure from a skate, a boot or a tyre melts a microscopic film of water ...

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 ...

PHILADELPHIA — Philly winters have been streaky in recent years, but homeowners and hockey enthusiasts are making the most of the recent deep freeze to build backyard ice skating rinks. While many ...

People around the country are building private rinks — some with as little as a garden hose and patience. Jeff Senatore plays ice hockey in his backyard in Lebanon, Tenn. “The nostalgia and the draw ...