Skate Technology

By | March 7, 2015

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Have you ever gone ice skating before? Are you one of those people that looks at ice skating, thinks of that you end up flat on your back on an icy sidewalk and leaves it to the professionals? Do you ever wonder how some people are able to look so natural out there on what has to be one of the most unnatural inventions ever? Well, a couple of things real quick. One, go ice skating. Learn to skate, it’s a great workout and it’s a ton of fun. Two, at this point a lot of that ability is practice from that person and also the sheer amount of technology and research that goes into skates these days.

You might not think there’s a ton of technology that goes into skates these days but you’d be wrong. I’m going to focus primarily on hockey skates, because I’m biased and using shopping for a new pair as inspiration for this post. The most basic science of the hockey skate is the interaction between the blade and the ice. The blade on a hockey skate isn’t one big edge of the bottom, it’s actually two. Skate blades have what’s called a hollow, where the bottom of the blade is flat and is ground out in the middle to create an edge on each side of the blade. The ability to glide on ice from a pair skates is due to the fact that when the blade is on the ice with the pressure of the person in the skates it melts the ice directly in contact with the blade.

The big focus on skate technology is making them as light and as strong as possible. The lighter your skate the faster you can go and the longer you can go in them before you get tired. If you paid close attention at the 2014 winter Olympics you might have seen some crazy looking skates with massive holes in the bottom between the boot and the blade. Those skates are strong enough to block a slapshot with roughly the same force as a bullet, but weigh less than two pounds.