hmmph....

[Jeff]

Every hour the temperature is 15 degrees or below, one inch of ice is created.

Take out water temp factors, UV from sun exposure, insulation from snow, etc and perhaps...  but in the real (read - sinking to the bottom of a murky lake and drowning) world, I highly doubt you'll get an inch an hour of ice...

[Protein Filled]

Yeah, if that was true, then we would have like 6 feet of ice by now. It has been below 15 for the last 4 days around here!

[tzracer]

Wind chill won't help, but...

Wind chill itself will not help, but wind will. Air is a poor conductor of heat, with no wind, the air at the water surface would act as an insulator slowing the cooling of the water and hence the creation of ice. Wind will prevent this from happening.

How's that go...

Every hour the temperature is 15 degrees or below, one inch of ice is created.

That sounds way to simple. First the rate of ice formation will depend upon the temperature difference (delta T) between the air and the water. The larger the difference the quicker ice will be formed.

Water has one of the highest heat capacities (1 calorie/gram degree Celcius = 1 cal/g*C) and air has heat capacity about 4.3 times smaller (0.23 cal/g*C).

ASIDE : a calorie and a Calorie are not the same. A Calorie is a dietary calorie - the ones listed on the lable. A Calorie = 1000*calorie.

The density of water is 1 g/cc (one gram per cubic centimeter) and the density of air is 0.00129 g/cc. So to lower one cc of water one degree C, 3,354 cc (3.354 liters since 1 cc = 1 milliliter, so 1000 cc = 1 liter) of air would have to drop 1 degree C. This works until the water is 0 C = 32 F. Now to freeze water, the latent heat of fusion is 80 cal/g, so to freeze one cc of water the air must remove 80 calories. So 27,130 cc or 27.13 liters of air would have to drop 1 degree C to freeze one cc of water.

So it takes a significant amount of cold air to freeze a relatively small amount of water. This is why living near a large body of water such as Lake Michgan can have a significant effect on the air temperature.

[tzracer]

Take out water temp factors, UV from sun exposure, insulation from snow, etc and perhaps...  but in the real (read - sinking to the bottom of a murky lake and drowning) world, I highly doubt you'll get an inch an hour of ice...

I would think that IR radiation would have a more significant effect than UV radiation.

[Super Dave]

I'm riding my TTR90 on Saturday...  

 :P