Engineering Marvel of the Winter Olympics: A Broom

Canadian engineers have taken some force sensors, accelerometers, and a small display unit and created a Smart Broom. It may lead to Olympic gold for Olympic curling teams who trained with it.

Curling players adjust the speed and direction of a granite stone as it slides down the ice towards a target by using brooms to sweep the ice in front of the stone. The sweeping slightly raises the temperature of the ice and creates micro scratches that affect the way the stone slides over it. But how do you really know if your sweeping technique is giving the proper effect? That’s where the Smart Broom comes in. Curling athletes train with the broom and it measures the effectiveness of their strokes.

Read all about it in this article from the New York Times.