good question

I start again with a simpler and thus better solution:
wikipedia says to wet: "The condition of being liquid or being covered in liquid"
wikipedia says to ice: "Ice is water frozen into the solid state."

well... if you argue that ice is not a liquid and thus not wet:
different states, thus ice is 0% wet.
but the wikipedias definition of wet is also "... OR covered in liquid", which would result to:
ice in water is 100% wet. (cause its covered in liquid)

but if you look at other definitions of wet, then you can have other percentages.
I just found the definition of wet: "being completely covered in liquid"
so, what if you have anything that is only half (of the surface) covered in liquid?
is it then only 50% wet?

so the answer is (imo): it really depends how you define wet.
give us your definition of wet, or a mathematical function, then we can calculate the maximum wetness ^^
your question isn't science, its philosophy

(btw. When Chuck Norris falls in water, Chuck Norris doesn't get wet. Water gets Chuck Norris.)

well your question is simple.. there's water in between the snow flakes (or merged ice droplets), or then there is no water and the snow flakes are very small so the composition is powder-like

it depends on the temperature, humidity and the original structure of the snow flakes (large, small etc).

and you said it yourself, it's the definition. The way i understand wet is when the water intrudes the macrostructure of the object (say, water enters the fabric structure of a cloth, or enters between the snow flakes in a snow ball). A raincoat doesn't get wet, yet it can be covered in water. The fabric repels water and doesn't allow it to enter between the fibres, whereas normal cloths (e.g. cotton) have quite large fibre separation in the fabric, so water enters it easily (+ the fibre material is probably hydrophilic aka doesn't repel water)

This post was edited by Ocen on Jan 9 2012 12:21pm

Ice can't be wet, when ice seems to be wet it is just ice that got liquid so you think it is wet but it is actually just a bit of liquid water on it. (am I wrong, scientists ?)

This post was edited by Azomon on Jan 10 2012 05:46am

I'm interested to know this too

Iso answer

Define "wet" please. Ice is never "wet" as long as it doesn't melt and become water i'd say. It gets wet because you heat the ice with your body warmth which makes it melt and thus being water again.

wet - adj - Covered or saturated with water or another liquid.

Wetness is either 1 or 0...wet or not wet. Ice can be covered with water, which by the above definition means the ice is wet. It is exactly as wet as anything else covered in the same amount of water.

"Saturated" is a different story. Ice has a crystaline structure, so it cannot possibly be saturated with another liquid. There is no room in between the h2o molecules for molecules of another substance. See image





So basically, you can call ice wet if it is frozen water covered with saturates water, and "how wet" would range from being covered with 2.99 x 10^-23 grams of water (1 molecule) to ∞ grams of water. However, ice can never be saturated due to its atomic structure.