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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Why your feet slip and slide on ice

Experiments and simulations disprove an old theory.
Young man slides and falls on frozen lake

Ice is slippery because molecules in the surface layer are only loosely bound to each other. Credit: Getty

Skaters slide across ice because they’re riding atop a layer of rolling molecules — not because the skates melt the ice as they go, as was previously thought.

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Nature 557, 470-471 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05225-7

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