Home > News > Cutting Ice with a Nanowire
September 6th, 2010
Cutting Ice with a Nanowire
Abstract:
In a classic experiment, a wire weighted at each end gradually slices down through a block of ice because of frozen water's unusual property of melting under pressure. In the 20 August Physical Review Letters, researchers describe simulating this experiment at the molecular level on a computer. They discovered that it's harder to push a hydrophobic (water-repelling) wire through ice than a hydrophilic (water-attracting) one. The analysis reveals new details of the interaction of water and ice with a hydrophobic object.
Source:
aps.org
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