"Pierre-Louis: If you really think about it, ice skating is just controlled slipping on ice. And whenever I go skating I can't help but think about the Winter Olympics, like the ones that are happening right now in Italy."
"Pierre-Louis: And watching the Olympics I started to realize that if you really think about it, so many of the Winter Olympic sports are just about controlled slipping on ice, like bobsledding, the luge, curling. And yet scientists still don't really know why ice is slippery. Sure, they have theories, like the pressure that we put on the ice maybe melts the ice, creating a thin watery layer. But scientists mostly agree that those theories aren't the full picture. The slipperiness of ice is actually still a mystery."
Ice skating is essentially controlled slipping on ice. Many Winter Olympic sports rely on sliding across ice surfaces, including bobsledding, luge, curling, and figure skating. Scientists do not yet have a complete explanation for why ice is slippery. Traditional explanations, such as pressure-induced melting that produces a thin watery layer, fail to account for all observations. School-taught accounts are incomplete. Current research considers multiple contributing mechanisms—pressure melting, frictional heating, surface premelting, and molecular-scale surface structure—to build a fuller explanation of ice slipperiness.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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