Salmon* – 1) Common Name for several fish in the Salmonidae
family, including trout. 2) A range of a pale pinkish-orange to light pink
colors, named after the color of salmon flesh. 3) A highly fluorinated racing
wax named for its color.
There was another big ski race this weekend, the City of Lakes Jr. and Minne Loppet. All three boys raced and had a great
time. Two of the three pairs of skis had
super fast salmon ski wax. I’ve written previously about ski wax and I continue to be intrigued by the wax material itself
and the discipline of selecting and applying wax to skis.
My previous description of wax covered the “sticky” type
called kick wax. Salmon is of the other type and engineered to help the skier
glide on the snow surface. The principle of glide wax is to balance the wet
friction, or suction, of liquefied snow and the dry friction, or roughness, of
the snow crystals. The goal is to get the ski to melt a thin layer of liquid
water to reduce the dry friction without creating too much of a puddle for the
ski to suction to.
Like kick waxes, specific glide waxes are designed to
perform under a variety of conditions. In general hard waxes are for cold
conditions and soft waxes are for warmer conditions. Wax is a lipid which means it is in a category
of molecules that are mostly composed of long hydrocarbon chains. Ski wax softness is determined by the length
of the hydrocarbon chains in the wax molecular whereas the length of the chain
determines the softness of the wax, with longer chains producing a harder wax.
If you’ve made it this far in the post you may be wondering,
“Why does he keep going on and on about wax?”
To which I’d say that I’m just fascinated by it and it demonstrates how
science permeates our lives. So I’ll
continue.
One of the big innovations in wax is the addition of fluorocarbons. You may have noted from the definition that opened
this post that Salmon is a highly fluorinated wax. Fluorocarbons have some interesting
properties, including that some formulations can dissolve such high
concentrations of oxygen that you could actually “breathe” their liquid form.
This is an interesting topic but the property that makes them useful for
inclusion in ski wax is that they can repel both oil and water. By “highly fluorinating” ski wax the wax engineers
created a product that performs like a wax without getting dirty and therefore
glide better and make the ski faster.
OK, now you know why I wouldn’t stop gushing about wax: it
proves that science is awesome.
Later, I’ll continue the wax story by outlining the art and science
achieved by wax technicians who not only leverage the surface chemistry of the
wax but also manipulate the surface geometry to maximize the ski’s
effectiveness.
*Special thanks to Wikipedia for supplying inspiration for
the wording of the first 2 definitions.
No comments:
Post a Comment