The physics behind curling

Curling is hugely popular in Canada, and it's only been an Olympic sport since 1998, but its roots lie in medieval Scotland, where it once was known as "the roaring game" because that's the sound you hear as a curling stone rolls down the ice. The earliest known written reference, according to Wikipedia, dates back to 1541, but there is an inscribed curling stone with the date 1511. Those early stones looked nothing like the "rocks' used in curling today, and because they were so irregular in size, shape and texture, players had far less control over the stones' trajectories along the ice.

Today's curling stones are made of a special kind of granite from Scotland, with a handle attached to the top, the better to grip and rotate (ever so slightly) as a player releases the stone. That's how you get the slow gentle curl of the stone's trajectory, hence the name.

Sweeping!!

When sweeping, pressure and speed of the brush head are key in slightly increasing the layer of moisture that builds up under the stone. One of the basic technical aspects of curling is knowing when to sweep. When the ice in front of the stone is swept, a stone will usually travel both farther and straighter.

Friction behind Curling

It is a known fact that contact pressure with ice melts a very thin layer of water on the surface of the ice. This in turn decreases friction. Thus, the friction is inversely proportional to the amount of contact pressure with the ice.

Comments

Physics of Black Holes...Or Lack Thereof

Isabella Jacavone To comprehend how the universe works, we must dwell into the most basic building blocks of existence; matter, energy, space, and time. NASA's Physics of the Cosmos program involves cosmology, astrophysics, and fundamental physics intended to answer questions about the elusiveness of complex concepts such as black holes, neutron stars, dark energy, and gravitational waves. In this blog post, I'd like to elaborate on a subject that is very intriguing to me; Black holes. And more specifically, what would happen if we got near one. A black hole is anything but a hole, but rather an immense amount of matter compacted into an extremely small area. A black hole is caused when, hypothetically, a star four times more massive than our sun collapses into a sphere no bigger than 600 square km. To put that in perspective, that's about the size of New York City. B lack holes were predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which showed that when a...

The Physics of Spiderman

Over this past weekend after I finished working on my homework, I decided to relax and watch a few movies before going asleep. Among the movies I watched was Spider-Man 3 from 2007 and despite the movie flaws I was interested by the scenes that showed Spider Man shooting through the sky with the use of his webs that come out of his wrists. Due to this, I decided to make my blog post about the physics of Spider-Man's slingshot. After doing some research, I discovered just how much information there is on the physics of Spider-Man and how elements of Spider-Man can be used as examples for most topics learned in mechanics. For this investigation, I will not be using the horrible cliche and terrible CGI infested mess that Spider-Man 3 is but instead the all around superior Spider-Man movie of Spider-Man 2 to investigate the physics of Spider-Man's web propelled slingshot. I want to talk about what happens in terms of physics when Spider-Man launches himself across a dista...

2017 Physics Nobel Prize - Capturing Gravitational Waves

2017 Physics Nobel Prize - Capturing Gravitational Waves Gravitational Waves Captured by LIGO Who? Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish, and Kip S. Thorne - LIGO/VIRGO Collarboration What? Observation of gravitational waves for the first time using LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. Where? Two locations in the US - Hanford and Livingston. (See figure 1) Figure 1: LIGO in the US When? 14 September 2015 HOW? The scientists captured gravitational waves by using an interferometer. The LIGO interferometer is a more glamorous interferometer than the original Michelson interferometer. It works through using light waves to measure gravitational interference (i.e. waves). First, one needs to understand the parts of an interferometer. The LIGO interferometer (and most) is shaped as an L. It has two 4 km vacuum tunnel arms with a mirror at each end. At the center of the arms, there is a beam splitter. Th...

LSA E Mech 2017-18

Search This Blog