Questions for ‘As winters warm, athletes must cope with harder snow and tricky ice’ 

To accompany ‘As winters warm, athletes must cope with harder snow and tricky ice’

SCIENCE

Before Reading:

1. Imagine you’re discussing snow sports with a friend. The friend claims that “all snow is the same.” Come up with two ways that snow properties can vary. Feel free to be creative. For example, you might consider what snow is like as it falls, how it layers on the ground or how it changes as it stays on the ground and is exposed to different conditions.
2. List three sports that rely on the presence of ice or snow. If you had to pick an ice or snow sport to play, which would you pick and why?
3. To what extent might climate change affect the sports we play? Think of a typical summer sport and a typical winter sport. For each one, describe how climate change might affect how the sport is done and describe a specific challenge that participants in this sport might encounter.

During Reading:

1. What is “skimo”?
2. How does the appearance of artificial snow compare with real snow, according to Noah Molotch?
3. In one sentence, summarize how artificial snow is made.
4. How does humidity affect the formation of natural snowflakes? What conditions tend to produce powder?
5. Why do skiers put wax on the bottom of their skis? What types of conditions do they evaluate to choose what type of wax to use?
6. Why might athletes experience “harder falls” on artificial snow compared with natural snow?
7. This story says that countries in the Northern Hemisphere lost an average of seven winter days from December to February. What constitutes a “lost” winter day in this study?
8. According to work by Joshua Culpepper and his team, how will ice quality in the Northern Hemisphere likely change in the upcoming decades?
9. What tool did Culpepper’s team use to make predictions about changes in ice quality?
10. Contrast the conditions that tend to form “black ice” versus “white ice.” How does the structural integrity of these two types of ice compare with one another?

After Reading:

1. Draw pictures depicting how the shape of natural snowflakes might compare with artificial snow particles. To what extent does the chemical composition of artificial snow differ from that of natural snow? Do differences in the properties of natural snow arise more from differences in snow particle structure or from differences in chemical composition? Briefly explain your answer.
2. Contrast the properties of artificial snow with those of natural snow. Include at least two specific properties in your analysis. Focus on properties that a skier or other snow user might notice. (Feel free to reuse and expand upon properties you mentioned in Question 1 in Before Reading.) For each property, describe challenges a skier might experience related to this property. Then, use the information in this story to explain how a professional skier might prepare for this kind of challenge.
3. Pick two different ice sports and contrast the ice type preferred by athletes of these sports. Then do a quick internet search to learn how the athletes’ equipment differs between these sports. Focus on one specific difference, such as variations in ice skate design. Explain how this difference in equipment design helps them excel in their sport. Connect this equipment design to the most preferred type of ice for each sport.