Why is sweeping in curling necessary? Isn’t the ice-sheet clean enough?
In: Physics
The curling ice sheet is pebbled. The friction of sweeping removes frost/liquefies an extremely thin layer.
Sweeping allows a degree of control over the stone. Sweeping reduces stone-ice friction so the rock will slow less quickly, and the stone will also curl less/travel straighter.
The ice is generally very clean, but relatively small bits of schmutz can have a pretty noticeable effect on the stone’s path, dragging and either leaving small scratches on the ice, or in more extreme cases catching between stone and ice and altering the path quite noticeably, known as “picking”.
Cleaning isn’t the primary reason for sweeping though. The path control mentioned above is the main reason.
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