Why Is Ice Slippery?

Why is ice slippery?

Ice slippery? Oh, I don't know, I couldn't tell you that. Um, but you skate on it. I skate on it, but, uh, you know, that it feels pretty slippery, doesn't it? It does feel slippery, but you would feel a different slipperiness to me because I skate for a living.

The ratio of friction versus air on water, frozen water. So, I'm here on an ice rink in, uh, Sydney, and I've been asking people why is ice slippery. Now, a lot of them kind of have the right idea; they say there's a layer of water on top of the ice, but they don't know why. They think it's just because the sun's out or because it's warm in Sydney and the ice melts.

So, I wanted to know why ice is slippery. Where the freezing meets the, um, less than freezing state, it becomes a liquid. So, it's the liquid on top of the frozen state that makes it slippery because it gets wet.

But, I mean, like down here, it's not so wet, right?

Yeah, no, it's not. Well, isn't it? I mean that's not—it's pretty frozen.

Yeah, but it's still slippery here. The water, for instance, on here will lubricate, and you'll have better sliding surface than you will with the dry ice. It's like lubrication or something.

I don't know, lubrication. Because the sun has, uh, heated up the ice, which causes it to melt. The water particles become unstable on the top, widen, causes it to be wet.

But would the ice be slippery even if there was no sun?

Uh, depends on the actual heat. It's not the sun's ray that does it; it's the actual temperature. The real reason is when you step on the ice, you compress it a bit, and that decreases its melting point.

And so, we get a thin layer of water that you can glide along. That's what makes ice slippery. If you were to slide on your belly across the water bit, you'd obviously get very wet, but you'd slide a lot further than you would on the dry section here.

Yeah, yeah. Have you tried that in Brisbane during the pack down of the event?

Um, I took, uh, one of our inflatable tubes, and I didn't think I was going to get very far, but because the ice was melting, I managed to slide 60 meters.

Wow!

Uh, from a 10 yard run-up, I slid 60 meters the whole way across the rink.

That's pretty impressive!

I was very happy with that. I didn't think I was going to get that far, but it doesn't actually have to be warm out. It can be freezing cold out, and you still get the same slippery effect because it's based on pressure, not the temperature of the outside air.

You bad skater.

I'm a bad skater?

Yeah. You want to go? Let's have a race.

You want to race me?

No, let's go.