Credit: Virginia Tech If you have ever gotten up on a winter morning and thrown yourself into the arduous task of scraping frost from a windshield, a Virginia Tech lab is engaging science [IS1] that could make your life much easier. In research funded by the National Science Foundation, Associate Professor Jonathan Borekyo has led a team in developing a potential solution for frost removal by way of electrostatics. As water freezes, positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons separate. Frozen ice crystals become electrified as the top of the frost becomes warmer than the bottom of the frost. This causes charged ions to move from top to bottom (warm to cold), but it turns out that the positive ions can migrate faster. The top of the frost ends up being negatively charged while the bottom is more positively charged, a concept known as charge separation.