Some winter sports entail hurling down icy slopes at death-defying speeds. Others involve sweeping. But skiing and curling - the sport in which players brush the ice in front of a sliding, 42-pound granite stone - do have one thing in common: expensive training gear.
UK researchers spent $89,000 developing a sensor-laden broom in the hopes of optimizing curlers’ strokes. Strain gauges measure how hard a brush is being pushed, while accelerometers provide velocity info and a thermocouple in the head monitors ice temperature. "Do you want to be sweeping your heart out and not know what you’re doing?" asks Mike Hay, the UK’s Olympic coach. "It’s really been smoke and mirrors until now." The women’s team used an early iteration of the brush prior to winning the gold in 2002. Now the men, too, are tapping the smart sweeper to try to ice the competition in Turin, Italy. - Brett Zarda
credit Corbis
UK researchers spent $ 89,000 developing a sensor-laden broom in the hopes of optimizing curlers’ strokes.
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Engineering an Olympic Sweep
