researchers make tiny ice crystals that are elastic and flexible trilobitesperfect crystals of ice microfiber showed the flexibility of a material we usually assume to be rather brittlevideoice is brittle and snaps if you break it right not this ice video by xu et alpublished july 8 2021updated july 9 2021ice is rigid and brittle it would be astonishing to bend an icicle around a softball and have it spring back to its original straight shape but thats what researchers have now done although on a much smaller scalethey produced microscopic ice crystals that are not only elastic and flexible but that also transmit light remarkably well along their lengths these ice microfibers could one day be used to study air pollution the research team suggested in a paper published thursday in sciencelimin tong a physicist at zhejiang university in china and his colleagues said they were inspired to study ice after working with a type of silica glass everyday experience teaches us that glass shaped into windows or drinking vessels is brittle dr tong said but long thin pieces of glass like fiber optic strands are flexible maybe the same is true of ice the researchers hypothesizedice occurs in a wide variety of natural settings like glaciers and icebergs but dr tong and his colleagues needed to make frozen water that matched very particular specifications this ice had to be nearly perfectthe team began by making a circular chamber just over an inch in diameter in a 3d printer using liquid nitrogen they cooled the space within the chamber to negative 58 degrees fahrenheit they then inserted tiny tools into this miniature laboratory including a metal needle with 2000 volts of electricity applied to it that voltage created an electrical field and water molecules present in the air responded to the field by settling on the needle very slowly at a rate of roughly a hundredth of an inch per second rodlike microfibers of ice grew from the tip of the needlethe microfibers never got very long they could barely be seen with the naked eye but highresolution imaging revealed that they were single crystals that means that the atoms within them are arranged in repeating patterns the atoms are ordered like honeycombs dr tong saidthis structural perfection paired with the microfibers relative lack of microscopic defects such as tiny cracks pores and missing atoms or molecules renders them much more flexible than naturally occurring ice said erland schulson an ice scientist at dartmouth college who was not involved in the researchthere are no grain boundaries no cracks no features that otherwise limit how much elastic strain a body can experiencevideothe ice microfibers bent here between two fingers could be made just visible to the naked eye video by xu et alto demonstrate that flexibility dr tong and his colleagues used microscopic tools to push on the microfibers they showed that the ice could be bent like a cooked noodle into almost complete circles before returning unchanged to its