A scientific look at the efficiency of curling brooms by Jenni Gill

Conclusion:

        My hypothesis was that the broom head that I created would reduce the friction the most allowing the rock to slide the farthest. Based on the mean of the distances that is correct. The charts show, when you disregard the extremes or outliers, the brownie, synthetic, and my broom all worked about the same. I am disregarding the difference shown in the mean graph because it is a very small difference and the sample size was not large enough to come up with a definitive answer on which broom works the best.

        One problem I encountered during testing was that after the first set my sweepers started getting tired. This was a problem because as they got tired the efficiency of their sweeping decreased. If I were to put a lot more time and effort into this I would build a mechanical sweeper. That way it would always be the same pressure no matter how long they have been sweeping for.  Another problem I had was the fact that the elasticity of the rubber tubing varies with its use and temperature changes. This could have caused the first rocks not to slide as far as the rest of the rocks. If I were to redo this experiment I would need to do all my testing in one day in order to reduce the discrepancies in the elasticity of the rubber tubing. One other thing that could have been improved was the fact that I needed two extra people to stand on the end of the launcher. I would fix that by coming up with a device that would anchor the launcher to the ice without damaging it. The
device would probably involve suction cups. 

        Over the course of this project I have learned many things. I learned the basics of trigonometry, the use of many different power tools, and how to take an idea from conception to realization. I have also learned about what causes friction and how to measure and calculate it. Another thing I learned was that the pebbling on the ice surface of a curling rink helps the rock to slide further because there is less of the rock touching the ice to create friction. The fact that when you sweep the ice, even the best sweepers can only get it up to -1°C, it doesn’t melt, yet sweeping can have a definite impact on the curling rock is another thing I learned. This last fact can be applied to arenas and icemakers everywhere. When the ice is at a higher temperature it is more slick making figure skating and hockey less energy depleting. The last thing I learned was that data can be interpreted in many different ways and you can change it mathematically to help show what you found and to help the reader see the trend. This is important if you’re in anything from marketing to science and you need to produce charts and graphs of data to help people see the trend.