When people build dams—giant walls that hold back entire lakes and rivers—they have to build an overflow channel called a spillway, a mitigation against flooding. But the really cool physics of this ...

"Researchers studying the physics of water can now settle on the model that water has a critical point in the supercooled regime. The next stage is to find the implications of these findings on waters ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Once upon a time, long ago, the world was encased in ice. That’s the tale told by sedimentary rock in the tropics, many geologists ...

Learning how to skip stones across a lake or pond is a time-honored childhood tradition. The underlying physics of skipping stones could also be a useful model for landing aircraft or spacecraft on ...

Using X-ray lasers, researchers at Stockholm University have been able to determine the existence of a critical point in supercooled water at around -63 °C and 1,000 atmospheres. Ordinary water at ...

Water, a molecule essential for life, has unusual properties—known as anomalies—that define its behavior. However, there are still many enigmas about the molecular mechanisms that would explain the ...

Ice cubes float in water because they’re less dense than the liquid. But a newfound type of ice has a density nearly equal to what’s in your water glass, researchers report in the Feb. 3 Science. If ...