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Cold, Hard Ice Skating Reality
By: Dylan Sawyer
Ice skating has been around for a very long time and has been done by many for different reasons. It originated as a form of transportation for workers across frozen lakes. These people tied blades to pieces of leather and attached them to their boots. Nowadays, ice skates are their own form of footwear. There are many different types of ice skates, which all function mostly the same, with slight variations. Despite the variations, they all apply the same principles as to how they propel a person along the ice. So, how do they work?
There are a few different principles that need to be discussed before putting them all together. These principles are; friction, properties of ice and water, and momentum. All of these principles are crucial to ice skating, without all, you would not be able to skate.
First is friction. Friction is the force that connects two different objects that rub against each other. This force is what causes objects passing by each other to do so less effectively than if they were not touching each other. When looking at an object at a microscopic scale, no surface is perfectly smooth. Everything has ridges. These ridges are what cause friction when objects touch. The ridges catch on each other. Without friction, you could not even walk! Your feet would just slide and get you nowhere.
The second principle consists of the properties of water. Water is a very peculiar substance. It is a liquid, which makes it slippery. Because water is slippery, it can act as a lubricant, and gets in between two other substances, reducing friction. This causes objects to slide easier. Another property of water is that it expands when frozen. This expansion is approximately 9% according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute. (LPI 2023) Ice expands, which is why, when you leave a drink in the freezer for too long, it explodes. The final important property of water is that it melts under pressure. Water has a very low melting point. This is why, if you leave something heavy on ice, it will eventually be absorbed into the ice as the surrounding ice is not under pressure and stays frozen. This is also why pipes with very cold water stay liquid to a certain point. This point of failure is when the pressure from the water trying to expand into ice is greater than the strength of the pipe.
The final principle of ice skating is momentum. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, momentum is classified as; “The force that keeps an object moving”. (Cambridge 2013) When you are running, you find that your body wants to keep traveling in that direction. Momentum is why your body wants to keep going.
Finally, when you put all of these principles of physics together, you get the ability to ice skate. The first step to ice skating is stepping onto the ice. The first feeling when stepping onto the ice is your blade digging into the ice because the ice is melting. This allows you to push off with your foot using a small amount of friction to generate some momentum. The water is a lubricant, which allows you to continue with the momentum into a glide and voila, ice skating!
Sources:
Sources:
Baxter, Sydney. Ice Expansion Diagram. 2022. Mechanical Weathering and Ice Wedging, Study.Com, https://study.com/learn/lesson/ice-wedging-examples-causes-what-is-frost-wedging.html .
Dheerajhinaniya. Friction Diagram. 2022. Static and Kinetic Friction, Geeks For Geeks, https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/static-and-kinetic-friction/ .
“Explore - All about Ice - Amazing Expanding Ice.” Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), Lunar and Planetary Institute, 2023, www.lpi.usra.edu/education/explore/ice/activities/ice_action/expanding_ice/#:~:text=As%20a%20result%2C%20ice%20is,expands%20approximately%209%25%20by%20volume.
Lever, James H., et al. “Revisiting Mechanics of Ice–Skate Friction: From Experiments at a Skating Rink to a Unified Hypothesis: Journal of Glaciology.” Cambridge Core, Cambridge University Press, 14 Sept. 2021, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-glaciology/article/revisiting-mechanics-of-iceskate-friction-from-experiments-at-a-skating-rink-to-a-unified-hypothesis/AC9154A588AC121ADE373EAEC3A50BAA.
“Momentum.” MOMENTUM | Definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/momentum. Accessed 5 Nov. 2023.
US, Bayer. “Science of: Ice Skating.” Medium, The Beaker Life, 28 Jan. 2019, medium.com/the-beaker-life/science-of-ice-skating-85ae38ce6ddc.
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