Slippery Science: The Physics of Ice
StarTalk Radio
00:00
The Quasi-Liquid Layer
On the surface of ice, you have little ice molecules that are bound to all the other water molecules around it. And normally ice is bonded to four neighbors, right? But at minus seven degrees C, sometimes ice is only bonded to two neighbors. Those doubly bonded ice molecules don't just kind of wiggle around on the surface, which is what creates this quasi-liquid layer.
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