If there were a gold medal for the bravest people at the Winter Olympics the competitors in the luge and skeleton would surely win.
They use the same courses as the bobsleigh event, but rather than encase themselves inside a mini-vehicle they instead prefer a flimsy-looking piece of plastic that looks like a tea-tray.
The main difference between the two disciplines seems to be the direction the athletes shoot down the track in - with lugers going feet first on their back and skeleton sliders going headfirst on their front.
And the tea-trays - really called pods - have no brakes.
The athlete steers the skeleton by gently transferring weight to the left or right. They take as direct a line as possible and avoid contact with the walls. Wind resistance is reduced by keeping elbows in and shoulders in contact with the sled. After the finish, the feet are dragged along the ice to bring the skeleton to a standstill.
So no gold medal as yet but - Hooray! Britain has won its first Olympic medal after Shelley Rudman raced into second place to claim the silver in the women's Olympic skeleton.
If you want to know more about the skeleton look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/winter_sports/4464466.stm
Curling is perhaps one of the strangest sports to watch, involving big rocks, a target painted on ice and people sweeping furiously with brooms.
It's played in teams of four people, and teams take it in turns to slide eight stones across the ice towards a target, trying to get as close to the centre - called the tee - as possible. The team with the nearest stone to the tee scores a point, and for every other stone nearer the tee than their opponents', they score another point.
What makes curling so curious to watch though are the two team members who use brushes to try to control the slide of the stone.
Curling is a fascinating interplay of force, friction and momentum, based on the fact that it's easy to slide things on ice. Just like a toboggan or ice skate, the curling rock slides because the pressure it exerts melts the ice beneath it, creating a thin film of water that lubricates its passage. The player's goal is to balance the energy he imparts to the rock with the friction of the rock on the ice, so that friction will win just when the rock is where he wants it to stop.
Curling would just be called "sliding," however, if not for the fact that the rocks are made to curl, or curve, as they move down the ice. The stone is a round piece of polished granite, concave on top and bottom. The direction in which the stone curls is very important. A stone rotating in an anticlockwise direction will curl to the left. This is because as the stone travels it tips forward. The pressure of the stone on the ice is greater at the front and causes more melting (momentarily) than the back. Consequently there is a layer of water between the stone and the ice and so less friction at the front of the stone than at the back.
And the frantic sweeping? Sweeping the ice just in front of a rock with a broom makes it travel faster and curl less. Sweeping melts the ice a little bit, decreasing friction, and removes any debris that might slow the rock.
Read more about the science of curling and http://www.edwardwillett.com/Columns/curling.htm
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