For 200 years, #ice was thought to be slippery because a thin liquid #water layer forms under pressure and friction under the weight of the footstep

For 200 years, #ice was thought to be slippery because a thin liquid #water layer forms under pressure and friction under the weight of the footstep.

But this idea of frictional melting appears to have defied direct experimental verification.

Now it also has been shown to be wrong.

A new paper presents molecular simulations of ice interfaces that reveal that ice surfaces liquefy without melting thermodynamically but predominantly by cold, displacement-driven amorphization.

Despite effective self-lubrication, very small ice friction is found to require water to slip past a hydrophobic counterface—or an excess amount of water, produced by, e.g., extreme sliding velocities.

#physics #science
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/1plj-7p4z