Winter sucks. Ice sucks. Shoveling sucks. What if roads, or your driveway, could get rid of snow and ice by themselves? (…with the help of our friend, the electron.)

A few days ago we shared a project about building an epic snow-melting system right into your driveway. But for obvious reasons, it’s not that easy to do — or cheap. But [Chris Tuan], an engineering professor at the University of Nebraska thinks he can change that.

He’s created his own special formula for conductive concrete. Which means you can turn the concrete into a resistive heat load. And this isn’t just a university research project that is going nowhere; it’s actually being trialed by the FAA for use in airports . There is a patch of it in Omaha undergoing testing right now.

And it’s actually not that complex. It consists of a mixture of 20% steel shavings and carbon particles, in a regular run-of-the-mill concrete. Apparently, this is enough to cause the entire patch of concrete to become conductive, meaning if you pump enough juice through it — it’d definitely melt some ice on top.

[Thanks Michael!]