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These Chunks of Ice Move All By Themselves, Thanks to a Cool Engineering Trick

It looks like something straight out of a Ouija board horror movie, but frosty—researchers have figured out how to make ice move by itself. A video capturing the creepy dynamic features an ice disk melting on a metal surface etched with an asymmetrical herringbone pattern. The ice and its small puddle slowly start to move sideways before suddenly picking up speed and slingshotting across the metal plate. The researchers suggest that this sort of independent movement could one day generate power

Ice discs slingshot across a metal surface all on their own

Scientists have figured out how to make frozen discs of ice self-propel across a patterned metal surface, according to a new paper published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. It's the latest breakthrough to come out of the Virginia Tech lab of mechanical engineer Jonathan Boreyko. A few years ago, Boreyko's lab experimentally demonstrated a three-phase Leidenfrost effect in water vapor, liquid water, and ice. The Leidenfrost effect is what happens when you dash a few drops of