Imagine bending an icicle. As weird as this sounds, it should be possible, and scientists have just made it happen (on a very small scale).
Using simulations, we can calculate how bendy a material should be, but this doesn’t always match what we measure. Normal ice can only bend about 2 percent as much as it should be able to. This is because ice crystals aren’t perfectly formed; they have defects that make them break easily.
A team of scientists from China and America wanted to see if they could create ice without these weaknesses. They cooled a chamber to negative fifty degrees Celsius and added water vapour. They then used electricity to attract the water to the tip of a needle, where it froze.
This created a fibre of ice the shape of a human hair, but even thinner. The researchers were able to bend this ice into a loop. When they let it go, it just bounced back into its original shape.
Lachlan Writes Science 