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Ice skating: History - how it works - speed skating

History of ice skating
Ice skating has been believed to be started in Sweden over twelve-hundred years ago by the Vikings. The runners, made of bones, were ground down until they formed a flat gliding surface, and thongs tied them to the feet. The blades were polished oxen or reindeer bones. These weren't very efficient, so they used a long stick to push themselves forward and stay upright. Skates were originally used for transportation over the frozen rivers and later used for fun. Skating has been found to date back to 50 B.C. It was most common to skate where there are long, cold winters especially in places like Scandinavia.

In the 17th century, canal racing on wooden skates with iron blades was popular in the Netherlands. Also in that century, James, the younger son of the British monarch Charles I, came to the Netherlands in exile, he fell for the sport. When he went back to England, this "new" sport was introduced to the British aristocracy.
In the 18th century, ice skating became a world known sport and the Dutch created skates with much longer blades.

How it works
Ice skating works because the metal blade at the bottom of the ice skate shoe can glide with very little friction over the surface of the ice. However, slightly leaning the blade over and digging one of its edges into the ice ("rockover and bite") gives skaters the ability to increase friction and control their movement at will. In addition, by choosing to move along curved paths whilst leaning their bodies radially and flexing their knees, skaters can use gravity to control and increase their momentum. They can also create momentum by pushing the blade against the curved track which it cuts into the ice. Skillfully combining these two actions of leaning and pushing - a technique known as "drawing" - results in what looks like effortless and graceful curvilinear flow across the ice.

Research in materials has come up with a number of theories explaining the true nature of skating. The issue is that the precise mechanism by which the low-friction is generated is not fully understood, though a number of plausible theories abound usually involving explanations of air-ice boundary layer water and/or friction generated through the skate bottom.

The boundary layer of water being the cause of slipperiness has been disputed when measurements of the boundary layer water with an atomic force microscope finding the boundary layer to be too thin to supply sufficient friction reduction. Nevertheless, a popular theory of this is: Because the molecular structure of ice is a crystalline structure, it turns out that having this structure abruptly stop when it reaches the top of the ice is not the most entropically favorable form. Instead, there is always a thin film of liquid water ranging in thickness from only a few molecules to thousands of molecules on top of the ice. This allows a smoother transition from the structured ice to the completely random structure of the air molecules. The thickness of this liquid layer depends almost entirely on the temperature of the surface of the ice (higher temperatures give a thicker layer), and the liquid layer disappears around −20°C (−4°F). However, skating is still possible at temperatures much lower than −20°C. Experiments show that ice has a minimum of kinetic friction at −7°C (19°F), and many indoor skating rinks set their system to a similar temperature.

Speed skating
Speed skating is a form of skating in which the competitors attempt to travel a certain distance as quickly as possible on skates. Types of Speed Skating are long track ice speed skating, short track speed skating, inline speed skating and quad speed skating.
Speed skating is currently conducted on outdoor or indoor ovals, often with artificially frozen ice. For the Olympic Games, rules demand a closed (indoor)oval-shaped track. According to the rules of the International Skating Union, a standard track should be either 400 m or 333 1/3 m long. 400 m is the standard used for all major competitions. Tracks of other, non-standard lengths, such 200 or 250 m, are also in use in some places for training and/or smaller local competitions.
On standard tracks, the curves have a radius of 25–26 m in the inner lane, and each lane is 4–5 m wide.
All races are held in pairs, for which two lanes on the track are used. Skaters wear bands around their upper arm to identify which lane they started in. The colors are white for inner lane and red for outer lane. At the back straight, the skaters switch lanes which causes them both to cover the same distance per lap. Occasionally, quartet starts are used to allow more skaters to start in a shorter time. This involves having two pairs of skaters in the lanes at the same time, but with the second pair starting when the first have completed approximately half of the first lap. The skaters in the second pair will then wear yellow and blue arm bands instead of the usual white/red.
Clap skates (also called clapskates, slap skates, slapskates, from Dutch klapschaats) are a type of ice skate used in speed skating. Unlike in traditional skates where the blade is fixed to the boot, the clap skates have the blade attached to the boot by a hinge at the front.

Clap skates were developed at the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, led by Gerrit Jan van Ingen Schenau, although the idea of a clap skate is much older; designs dating from around 1900 are known.

The clap skate was first used in the 1984/1985 skating season. It was, however, not until the 1990s that the idea was taken seriously. In the 1996/1997 season, the Dutch female team started using the skates with great success. The rest of the skating world soon followed suit, causing a rain of World Records in the following seasons, including the 1998 Olympic Winter Games at Nagano, Japan. Nowadays, all top level skaters, and many amateur enthusiasts use clap skates.

Clap skates allow for better lap times because with every stroke the skate maintains contact with the ice longer, thereby distributing the energy of the leg more effectively.




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