‘Eureka’: Alberta researcher puts new spin on curling conundrum

Edward Lozowski might have solved a poser that has confused curlers for generations: What creates rocks curl?

Lozowski, a highbrow emeritus with a expertise of scholarship during a University of Alberta, has finished a math and believes he can explain the physics.

After carrying “scratched down hundreds of pages of equations,” Lozowski has combined a initial mathematical indication accurately explaining the phenomenon.

‘It’s a formidable problem’

“People have been perplexing to get an answer to this doubt as to since curling rocks twist for about 100 years,” Lozowski pronounced in an talk with CBC Radio’s Edmonton AM.

“I’ve been scratching my conduct about this one for about 4 years now.

“I suspicion we could do it in underneath a year though it’s taken most longer. It’s a formidable problem.”

Alberta’s Kevin Martin inspects a mill before a pull opposite Quebec during a Canadian Men’s Curling championship in Hamilton in 2007. (Canadian Press)

For decades, scientists who worried to regard themselves with such matters assumed a heading twist of any rock was caused by ice friction, pronounced Lozowski.

They believed the tiny pebbles on a ice surface caused a rock to curl.

‘What curlers call a curl’

“They suspicion that maybe that ice attrition that causes it to stop also causes it to pierce to one side, that is what curlers call a curl,” Lozowski said.

“It turns out nobody, including me, could use ice attrition to explain a bulk of a curl. It moves about 5 or 6 feet in a good curling diversion and it only can’t be explained with ice friction.”

Lozowski’s speculation is some-more complicated. He likens a phenomena to a work of a tangled round saw.

When a blade of a saw jams and stops rotating, a whole saw starts to pivot. It’s a same with curling rocks, he said.

The textured bottom of the stone indeed binds to any small ice pebble it encounters, and pulls it to a violation point. When hit with a icy pebble is broken, a stone lurches ahead, and curls.

His research, ‘First beliefs pivot-slide indication of a suit of a curling rock: Qualitative and quantitative predictions’ was recently published in Cold Regions Science and Technology.

“Scientists in a past have abandoned a fact that a rocks slip on pebbled ice, and those incited out to be unequivocally essential,” he said

“When that using rope of slab hits a pebble, it stops rotating momentarily … and starts rotating around a pebble,  and that causes it to pivot.”  

“I wish we could say, ‘Eureka’ “

Each particular confront lasts a matter of tens of nanoseconds, pronounced Lozowski.

“Every time it encounters a pebble, that suit instruction is altered ever so slightly,” he said.

“But during a march of a slide, a stone encounters tens of thousands of pebbles so each small confront changes a instruction of motion.”

While Lozowski’s investigate explains a mechanics of curling, he pronounced it expected won’t give Canadian curlers an edge.

“I wish we could say, ‘Eureka, we have come adult with a approach to make Canadian curlers even improved than they are,’ that would be tough to do, since of march as everybody knows, Canadian curlers are a tip of a world,” he said.

“All a parameters have to do with a inlet of a ice, and if a ice builder changes them, he changes them for everybody who plays on that ice.”

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-researcher-spin-curling-rock-science-1.4435849?cmp=rss