Liquid water is easily electrically charged, due to its polar nature. That’s why rubbing a comb is enough to deflect a stream of water. Ice is harder to charge, but Keep reading
Tag: icing
Energy-Efficient Deicing
Defrosting and deicing surfaces is an energy-intensive affair, with lots of heat lost to warming up system components rather than the ice itself. In a new study, researchers explore a faster and Keep reading
Avoiding Droplet Contact
Cold rain splashing on airplane wings can freeze in instants. To prevent that, researchers look for ways to minimize the time and area of contact a drop has. Hydrophobic coatings and textures can Keep reading
Phase-Switching to Avoid Icing
Preventing ice and frost from forming on surfaces – especially airplane wings – is a major engineering concern. The chemical de-icing cocktails currently used in aviation are a short-lived solution, Keep reading
Freezing Drop Impact
At the altitudes where aircraft fly, it’s often cold enough for water drops to freeze in seconds or less. Once attached to a wing, such frozen drops disrupt the flow, Keep reading
Avoiding Ice
Keeping ice from forming on a surface is a major engineering challenge. Typically, there’s no controlling certain factors – like the size and impact speed of droplets – so engineers Keep reading
Surfaces That Scrape Off Ice
Ice can be a terrible pest, freezing to surfaces like roads and airplane wings and causing all sorts of havoc. Some surfaces, though, can actually prompt a freezing drop to Keep reading
Ice Bridges
During winter, Canada’s Arctic Archipelago, home of the Northwest Passage, generally fills with sea ice. These ice bridges form in the long and narrow straits between islands. A new paper Keep reading
Icy Spikes
Water is one of those strange materials that expands when it freezes, which raises an interesting question: what happens to a water drop that freezes from the outside in? A Keep reading
Growing Snowflakes
Watching a snowflake grow seems almost magical–the six-sided shape, the symmetry, the way every arm of it grows simultaneously. But it’s science that guides the snowflake, not magic. Snowflakes are Keep reading