Spooky! Grooved surface sends ice sailing — no outside push needed

acceleration: A change in the speed or direction of some object.

aluminum: A metallic element, the third most abundant in Earth’s crust. It is light and soft, and used in many items from bicycles to spacecraft.

colleague: Someone who works with another; a co-worker or team member.

electricity: A flow of charge, usually from the movement of negatively charged particles, called electrons.

engineer: A person who uses science and math to solve problems. As a verb, to engineer means to design a device, material or process that will solve some problem or unmet need.

environment: The sum of all of the things that exist around some organism or the process and the condition those things create. Environment may refer to the weather and ecosystem in which some animal lives, or, perhaps, the temperature and humidity (or even the placement of things in the vicinity of an item of interest).

force: Some outside influence that can change the motion of an object, hold objects close to one another, or produce motion or stress in a stationary object.

frost: What results when liquid water freezes as it comes in contact with a surface that has a below-freezing temperature.

kinetic energy: The energy held by an object due to its being in motion. The amount of this energy contained will depend on both the mass (usually weight) of the object and its speed.

levitate: To seemingly defy the force of gravity by hovering (or floating) in some fluid, especially air, or to make that hovering happen.

mechanical engineer: Someone trained in a research field that uses physics to study motion and the properties of materials to design, build and/or test devices.

meltwater: The water that comes from melting ice. The quantities can be large and show up quickly when it comes from melting glaciers, ice sheets and snow-capped mountains.

physicist: A scientist who studies the nature and properties of matter and energy.

playa: A flat-bottomed desert area that periodically becomes a shallow lake.

pressure: Force applied uniformly over a surface, measured as force per unit of area.

propulsion: The act or process of driving something forward, using a force. For instance, jet engines are one source of propulsion used for keeping airplanes aloft.

recall: To remember.

surface tension: The surface film of a liquid caused by the strong bonds between the molecules in the surface layer.

technology: The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, or the devices, processes and systems that result from those efforts.

turbine: A device with extended arm-like blades (often curved) to catch a moving fluid — anything from a gas or steam to water — and then convert the energy in that movement into rotary motion. Often that rotary motion will drive a system to generate electricity.