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Ice skating!

Momentumous

Entry posted by Momentumous

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Ice skating has a lot of obvious physics involved.

For one, you could easily look at the centripital motion invovled when a figure skater spins. Conservation of angular momentum plays a huge roll in how they control the speed of their spins, but we've all heard that before.

There's physics involved in the very fundamental movement of iceskates. When you iceskate, you put a lot of pressure on a very small, thin surface area. This force, as well as the friction between the blade and the ice, actually causes the ice just beneath the skate to melt. So in actuality, you're not ice skating--you're water skating. This is why ice skating leaves tracks behind you; because you melted the ice in divets where you're skates were. The friction is also why you can glide to a stop pretty easily-- since there's enough friction to melt the ice, there's plenty of friction to slow the skates to a stop. If you didn't keep propeling yourself and adding force into the equation, you'd never go anywhere.

Friction plays a HUGE roll in control during the winter!

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