This is a big week in Canadian curling. It is a big week for curling in Prince George.
Locally, we have the Winter Games, where all of the provincial teams are vying with one another for top spot. But we also have Prince George curler Patti Knezevic and her team representing British Columbia at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.
TSN is covering both tournaments. Curling is now a nationally televised sport and although I have been told many times over the years that it is "not a real sport", I would reply, "Try sweeping for ten ends." Curling is a very demanding sport.
It is also a great deal of fun to play, although I do miss the "thwack" of the old corn brooms. This is probably one of the most visible areas where science has changed the game. The new heads allow for much better control of sweeping.
Back in 2000, materials scientist Jane Blackford and coworkers at the University of Edinburgh were interested in helping the British Olympic curling team. After all, Canadian teams were dominating the world but curling was invented in Scotland.
They developed a new scientific broom to measure how the brush is moving and how hard it is pushing against the ice. In essence, the scientists believed that sweeping helps to warm the ice in front of the rock. It doesn't totally melt it but it does warm the surface layer. This has been demonstrated using infrared cameras.
The result is an atomically thin layer of liquid water on the ice surface which reduces friction. Anyone who has ever made the mistake of stepping on wet ice knows just how slippery it can be. Just standing on wet ice can be a challenge!
Dr. Blackford was hoping optimizing the power of the brush to generate a sliding surface might yield better results. By using a scientific broom fitted with sensors, the team could aid curlers in perfecting their sweeping technique. Good sweeping can significantly impact a game.
If the results for the past decade are anything to go by, the scientific approach adopted by the Scots can only be considered a moderate success. Most teams have followed suit but there is much more to the game than just sweeping.
In particular, the part of the game that is hard to see when watching the game is the ice making. Creating good ice with good pebble is not trivial. There has been much progress made in recent years.
The study of "cryotribology" or ice friction has allowed researchers to improve the curl. Ice now has much more swing than in decades past. The game has become much more about skill rather than power.
To learn more about how ice melts under pressure and with friction, researchers have designed and built instruments to study the process in detail. These devices are not particularly complicated. Essentially, they consist of a stylus dragged across a rotating disk of ice. They are a bit like record players except that the needle can be a variety of materials and the record is a disk of ice.
Such devices allow for variations in the materials to be studied on the surface, including granite to simulate a curling rock. They also afford the opportunity to change both the chemical composition of the water used to make the ice along and the temperature of the surface. In all, a great deal has been learned.
By examining the surface with a scanning electron microscope, a very detailed picture of how the different forces or pressures affect the microscopic properties of the ice surface has emerged. By refining the experiment and upping the magnification using an atomic force microscope which can "see" the surface at the atomic level, many questions about the surface of ice have been answered.
Is the surface of ice really a liquid? Partly. Does the liquid layer allow an object to slide? It would appear to play a significant role. Is pressure necessary to create a layer of liquid? It would appear not.
There is still much to understand but it would appear the surface of ice is corrugated with strips of mobile and fixed water molecules. The mobile water molecules decrease the friction but the surface is far from smooth at a molecular level. Modifying the temperature and composition of the ice can lead to a better playing surface.
Of course, none of this has mentioned the curling rocks which have been refined over time. Nor the athletes themselves who engage in modern scientifically designed physical training programs off ice and on, along with better nutrition and the help of physiotherapists and sports psychologists.
Science is changing the game. It allows both elite athletes and beer league players to up their game but this week, it will still come down to a great shot by some of the best in the country.
