The cold night air then freezes the water on the surface, thickening the total amount of ice.Īfter a few nights of repeating this process during freezing weather, the ice gets very thick, more or less eliminating the possibility of a skater falling through thin ice.Īpparently, this technique allows the skateway to open earlier in the season than it could with just natural freezing. To take advantage of this physical property, the Rideau managers drill through the ice nightly and pump water from below onto the top of the ice, flooding the surface. Sheet ice freezes from the top down due to sub-freezing air temperatures, while the water underneath has an insulating effect, and is itself insulated by the ice above it.
In terms of physics, keeping the Rideau skateway safe for skating works like this: They use a wonderful application of physics and mechanical water pumping to create more ice than would naturally occur, and to keep it smooth over the course of the winter. With the Rideau skateway in mind, and knowing that we get deep freezes in DC at least once or twice per winter, I decided to analyze whether we could establish a similar winter ice skating environment on the one-mile section of the canal in Georgetown.Īccording to the managers of the Rideau skateway, maintaining the surface as a safe place to skate is a bit more involved than just waiting for it to freeze. Image by Josh Hermias used with permission. Some winters, the canal ice gets very thick and smooth, and skating becomes viable for a short window- granted, sometimes creaking and cracking ice makes one doubt the wisdom of this. When I started working at the Georgetown BID three years ago, I moved into offices right next to the C&O Canal, which runs through the heart of Georgetown's commercial district. She even met a professor who commutes to the university daily by skates in the winter. My wife was in Ottawa on an academic trip and skated on it. I've been obsessed with the Rideau skateway since I first learned about it eight years ago. The skateway runs along the Rideau Canal, from downtown Ottawa to the south, cutting through some of Ottawa’s densest urban neighborhoods. Creating the same thing along the C&O Canal, which runs through Georgetown, could be physically possible, but there are a lot of steps to get there. In Ottawa, a canal that runs through the city turns into a skater’s paradise when it freezes, with some people even using it to commute.
0 kommentar(er)
