In the 20th century, an alternative explanation, called "friction melting", proposed by Lozowski, Szilder, Le Berre, Pomeau, and others showed that because of the viscous frictional heating, a macroscopic layer of melt ice is in-between the ice and the skate. With this they fully explained the low friction with nothing else but macroscopic physics, whereby the frictional heat generated between skate and ice melts a layer of ice. This is a self-stabilizing mechanism of skating. If by fluctuation the friction gets high, the layer grows in thickness and lowers the friction, and if it gets low, the layer decreases in thickness and increases the friction. The friction generated in the sheared layer of water between skate and ice grows as √V with V the velocity of the skater, such that for low velocities the friction is also low.
In the 20th century, an alternative explanation, called "friction melting", proposed by Lozowski, Szilder, Le Berre, Pomeau, and others showed that !because of the viscous frictional heating, a macroscopic layer of melt ice is in-between the ice and the skate. With this they fully explained the low friction with nothing else but macroscopic physics, wh?ereby the frictional heat generated between skate and ice melts a layer of ice. This is a self-stabilizing mechanism of skating. If by fluctuation the friction gets high, the layer grows in thickness and lowers the friction, and if it gets low, the layer decreases in thickness and increases the friction. The friction generated in the sheared layer of water between skate and ice grows as √V with V the velocity of the skater, such that for low velocities the friction is also low.