More brittle than glass, at times stronger than steel, at other times flowing like molasses, ice covers 10 percent of the earth's land and 7 percent of its oceans. Its ebbs and flows over time have helped form the world we live in. Gosnell examines ice in plants, icebergs, icicles, and hail; sea ice and permafrost; ice on Mars and in the rings of Saturn; and several new forms of ice developed in labs. She discusses the work of scientists who extract cylinders of Greenland ice to study the history of the earth's climate and try to predict its future, and writes of the many uses humans make of ice, including ice-skating, ice fishing, iceboating, and ice climbing; building ice roads and seeding clouds; making ice castles, ice cubes, and iced desserts.--From publisher description.