Curling
hair can be a pretty warm activity, if you use an electric curling
iron.
Curling
ribbon is temperature-neutral but not “cool” enough in the
hip/fashionable sense to earn it a holiday.
No, today is about the sport of curling.
Curling
combines the chilly fun of ice skating with the techniques of bowling
and shuffleboard and also the household skill of sweeping the floor! There is a lot of strategy to the game, so some call it “Chess on Ice.”
Curling was invented in medieval Scotland. It has been an Olympic Sport since 1998.
Stones,
Brooms, and Teflon Shoes
Curling
is played on an ice rink that has been sprayed with water droplets
that freeze into a surface called pebbled
ice.
Curlers slide the curling stones, which are literally granite stones
fitted with colored handles, over this pebbled surface. Any rotation
a curler gives to the stone causes the stone to travel in a curved
path—in other words, the stone curls inward or outward. The stone's
path may also be influenced by the sweepers who use their brooms to
slightly melt the ice in front of the stone.
Curling
shoes have different soles. One shoe is a slider shoe, and it is
typically made of Teflon. The other shoes is called the hack foot
shoe. It is more like a regular athletic shoes, made for maximum
traction. By the way, there are rubber hacks on the ice to help
players push off as they start their bowling-like delivery of the
stone.
The
goal of curling is to accumulate the maximum score, determined by the
stone's distance to the center of a target. Stones must at least
touch the outer rim of the target to score any points.
Sliding
the stones to the target is only part of the goal, however—because
the other team is also taking its turns in sliding their
different-colored stones. Each team can put two stones into positions
that “guard the house” (the house being the target)—and these
stones are not allowed to be touched. After the guard stones are in
place, however, the two teams often deliberately aim their stones to
hit the other team's non-guard stones out of play. The trick is to
(1) avoid your opponent's guard stones, (2) hit your opponent's
scoring stones out, and (3) still leave your own stones in a good
scoring position.
Check
out curling in this short video!
Here,
NHL (pro-hockey) players try curling.
By
the way...
I
guess I would have to admit that curling really is cool! All that
ice, you know....
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on this date:
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