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Raymond J. de Souza: Forget the double touch, science doesn't know why rocks curl

There is something attractive in not knowing exactly how curling works

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Olympic curling’s raging controversy, with Canadians in the unusual role of foul-mouthed villains, seems to have been put on ice. The special umpires summoned into action on Saturday to watch for the dreaded “double touch” were gone by Monday. The last time there was such careful attention to fingers on stone in Italy Michelangelo was sculpting the Pietà.

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Curlers are already musing that all the attention might do the sport some good. When the Brier, Canada’s men curling championship, was last in Kingston, I bought tickets so my parishioners could attend all the matches over ten days. Outside Canada, interest is not quite so intense. But now allegations of cheating against the Canadians have made curling click bait! People were talking semi-knowledgably about the hog line.

Raymond J. de Souza: Forget the double touch, science doesn't know why rocks curl Back to video

There has even been attention paid to a matter which has heated up in recent years, namely the physics of curling. Serious scholars have tracked rocks from hack to house, and pronounced that — like the big bang and black holes and the nature of light and quantum mechanics — there is something of a mystery here. We know how to make the rocks curl — Canadians are amongst the best in the world at that — but we don’t know exactly why the rocks curl.

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Some 40 years ago, when Bill Cosby was perhaps the most famous and admired man in the world who didn’t hold a prominent office — long before his serial sexual predation exposed him as fraudulent exploiter — he did a show at the Saddledome in Calgary, selling some 20,000 seats, unheard of for a comedian. Before getting to his regular jokes, he opened with 20 minutes of ad-libbed material, consisting mostly of him recalling how, after watching curling on television that afternoon at his hotel, he tried to explain to his wife on the phone what these Canadians were doing. Curling, then and now, is hilarious even for Canadians when seen through non-Canadian eyes.

At the Olympics the foreigners, as it were, join in the fun. It was even more fun in the 1980s, when corn brooms were still in use, and the thwack-thwack-thwack made curling as much an auditory experience as a visual one. I still remember Cosby, the master of vocal effects, mimicking the thwacking. Corn brooms were like a metronome set at top speed, matching the rising heart rates of a tense contest at a prairie bonspiel.

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Physics killed off the corn broom, replaced first by push rooms made of hair, and now synthetic materials. They make for better sweeping, which helps rocks run farther and straighter, reducing friction on the ice by ever so slightly melting it ahead of the passing granite stone.

In recent years, the capacity to make ever-more precise measurements, including with electron microscopes, have made it possible to track exactly what is happening to the rocks to make them curl. Understanding has deepened, but questions remain.

The basic physics of curling depend upon the relationship of rotation and friction. If you slide a glass across a table, with a little spin, it will make a curving path, moving to the left if rotating clockwise or to the right when counter-clockwise.

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The glass, as it moves forward, encounters greater friction at the front then the back, as it leans into the table. The greater friction at the front makes the glass curl to the left when spinning clockwise.

Curling rocks do the opposite; clockwise spinning goes to the right. Why might that be? The rock is on ice, not a table. Friction causes heat, which melts the ice at the front of the rock, meaning the greater friction is at the back — the opposite of the glass on the tabletop. So it curls the opposite direction.

Is the melting-friction explanation correct? That was the dominant theory in Canada, but about fifteen years ago researchers in Sweden proposed that curling rocks actually make miniscule scratches in the ice. In effect, the front of the rock scratches out a track that the back of the rock follows — hence the curl in the direction of rotation.

Were the Swedes right? Back in British Columbia, researchers proposed a third solution. Curling ice is not entirely smooth, but “pebbled” with thousands of tiny droplets sprayed upon it, unlike hockey ice. As the rock encounters these “pebbles,” like hitting a barrier, it is deflected off course — again. Grabbing hundreds of these as it glides down the ice, the rock pulls itself in the direction of its rotation.

There is something attractive in not knowing exactly how curling works, especially given how precisely measured competitive advantages are now at the Olympics. There was the flap before the games about adding a few square inches of material in the skintight nether regions of ski jumping suits, producing added lift that could extend flight by several metres. Korean snowboarders have been disqualified for having forbidden chemicals in their ski wax. Luge (feet first) and skeleton (head first) are all about the aerodynamic madness of hurtling down a ice chute, so helmets and suits and sleds are all highly standardized.

So too now in curling, with sensors in the rock handles to signal the exact moment of release. It’s all necessary, and also necessarily a bit cold, impersonal, mechanical. The mysterious physics of curling remind us that even in the highly regulated environment of Olympic sports, our capacity for control is limited. Physics can point to metaphysics.

Regarding the profane shouting match last Friday between Canadian curler Mark Kennedy and the Swedish team — not our best look, Kennedy himself conceded — it should be recalled that 10 years ago the same Kennedy was curling for Canada at the 2016 men’s world championships, his rink skipped by Kevin Coe.

Playing the Swiss, the sensors malfunctioned, meaning the Swiss lost a rock. There being no video replay, and no appeal protocol, the Swiss simply had to suffer their bad luck until Koe, contrary to the rules, said he was in favour of allowing them to throw the rock again. It was gracious good sportsmanship. Properly Canadian, we would like to think.

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