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.
What makes ice slippery? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly uncover the complex physics of ice and cool facts we’re still learning about it with physicist and author, Laurie Winkless.
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Photo Credit: Sharon Mollerus, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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