Why are your hands slippery when dry, get “grippy” when they get a little bit wet, then slippery again if very wet?

Question

Why are your hands slippery when dry, get “grippy” when they get a little bit wet, then slippery again if very wet?

In: Physics

Answer 1

Water sticks to water, making wet things stick to wet things. If the layer of water is thick the surfaces can easilly slide because water easilly slides across itself.

However, if the water layer is thin and the surfaces aren’t smooth then the surfaces can still touch in a lot of places. The water can still stick the surfaces together, but not be thick enough to make sliding easy, and the sticking caused by being wet makes sliding even harder than if the surfaces were dry.