oh yes sports fans. you know you like it.
as a girl growing up in Detroit, one could always find curling on CBC.
what a great sport...yelling at a rock, sweeping with a broom---it's like being a wife, no!?
Andy and the guys with fancy pants gave you the overview in the previous post. Here is a pretty cool website that explains all sorts of things like what's the sheet, the stone, the delivery and strategic rock placement.
The key though, is the turn of the rock and the sweeping.
SO, recall that the stone has a handle on it. By turning the handle prior to releasing it you can control if the rock in-turns or out-turns. If you are a righty, you turn the handle clockwise to get it to travel to the right of the sheet. A counter-clockwise turn will send the stone toward the left of the sheet.
Now, here's the fun part. As the rock slides across the ice, the front of the rock creates friction on the surface of the ice. That friction causes a slight melting of the ice leaving a small film of liquid which alters the contact of the stone on the ice.
For the curious---here are some references:[1] "The Motion of a Culing Rock", Shegelski, Niebergall, and Walton,
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS, volume 74, pages 663-670, 1996.
[2] "The Motion of Rapidly Rotating Culing Rocks", Shegelski and
Niebergall, AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS, volume 52, pages 1025-1028, 1999.
[3] "The Motion of Rotating Cylinders Sliding on Pebbled Ice",
Shegelski, Niebergall, and Reid, CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS, volume
77, pages 847-862, 1999.
[4] "The Motion of a Culing Rock: Inertial vs. Noninertial Reference
Frames", Shegelski and Reid, CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS, volume 77,
pages 903-922, 1999.
By sweeping in front of the rock, you can generate more or less friction. The amount of heat generated by the sweeping depends on the amount of pressure applied and the vigour with which the sweeping motions occur. The faster and harder the sweeping....the more the friction...the more the heat...the more the melt....the longer the slide
I can't do any better than this:
TOO FREAKIN' COOL
Posts
3 comments:
The Simpsons has a great Curling episode on last Sunday. Marge was able to do amazing things with the rock because of her vast years of cleaning experience.
I agree. Curling is a great sport. Growing up in Ann Arbor we also watched it on the Canadian stations out of Windsor. Back then it was only guys- much cooler with the women...
Curling is amazing.. If anyone saw the Great Brittan vs. Canada men's Match Saturday night/Sunday morning and heard the crowd burst into the a spontaneous in sync Oh Canada and didn't get chills, you may not be human.. I think I'm taking up curling.
Post a Comment