Originally Posted by Gojohnnygo.
Only if your on a lake or pond where the ice is thick and stays frozen solid for long periods of time. I'm talking about thin ice that goes thur a freeze and thaw cycle. Like on the street or path. It becomes very hard in cold temps, but do to the freeze and thaw it becomes brittle. Creating air pockets that collapse under pressure. Therefor giving you more bite.
If you got more to add please do. info is good.
Peace John,
Okay. To get hypertechnical:
"The force of friction depends on two values, the force pushing the surfaces together (FN) and the coefficient of friction (µ). Thus,
Ff = µFN
The coefficient of friction is a constant that depends on the two surfaces in contact. This constant changes when motion begins. Since fs > fk, and the normal force (FN) remains constant, the coefficient of friction of static friction is more than that of kinetic friction. Thus, µs > µk.
The coefficient of ice is relatively low and much less than one. A system with a low coefficient of friction has a low resistance to the surfaces sliding across one another. The fact that ice has a low coefficient of friction can be seen easily by pushing someone across an ice-skating rink. In order for the person to move the push must exceed the frictional force. The slightest nudge will cause the person to slide across the ice, therefore the frictional force is low and through inference the coefficient of friction for ice is minimal as well."
From
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/GennaAbleman.shtml
But, for those of us who are mear mortals, what this means is that ice is slick. Adding water to ice - as occurs when ice is near the melting point (32F, 0C) - adds a layer of lubricant to something that is already slick, like putting grease on teflon. Along comes a cyclist, already unstable, hits the ice and water mixture and down he goes! This is independant of the size of the ice patch or how long it has been at temperature.
Now if you remove one of the components of the triple point by lowering the temperature, you decrease the "lubricity" or slickness of the ice patch and increase the coefficient of friction. (Only the solid ice and liquid water are important for our purposes. The gaseous part is only put in there to confuse chemistry students and, when they think they understand it, to allow them to feel smuggly superior to engineering students.) The ice becomes more sticky which keeps the cyclist from bruising his ego. It's not the air pockets that give bite but the ice is less slick.
Overall what we all observe is true - wet warm(ish) ice is slick while dry cold ice isn't.
Boring father/teacher/scientist mode off now.
Stuart Black