Subject: Ice-skating

Hi scientist,



In Holland, it is a tradition to organize every year a big ice-skate

contest; the 'eleven-city-tour'. This 200 km. tour has, however, only

been organized for a couple of times this century because the ice 

simply was too thin to allow 30.000 people to skate on it. This year,

people have tried to do 'ice-surgery' by adding ice-blocks on places

with just water. This works fine. On other places, the ice is too thin.

Now here's the question. I think that the ice would grow faster when 

water is put on TOP of the ice, instead of waiting for the ice to grow.

The reason would be that ice does not transport heat from down to up

as fast as water does from up to down (water feels colder than ice,

so i think it transports heat and cold faster and the cold must come 

from the outside-air. Besides that, warm water goes up, so for the ice

to grow at the bottom, first about 2 meters of water has to be cooled

to almost zero degree celsius. 



I've got a bet on it, so please answer me that i'm right (it would

also  be a revolution in holland ;-)).



Thanks in advance,



Joep



B.T.W. This web-page really is a great idea!

Re: Ice-skating