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Doug Bodger talks about the stick.
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Hockey Sticks
Just as each player has his own preference when it comes
to sharpening his skates, each player prefers his own customized stick.
Players develop their preferences for sticks over the course of their careers.
The differences between the sticks can be significant. Some players prefer
longer, straighter sticks; others prefer sticks with more curve on the blade.
Still other players prefer a different "lie" in the stick. (The
lie determines the amount of the stick blade that comes in contact with
the ice.) It is all very personalized and the players themselves spend many
hours preparing their own sticks.
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High-Tech Hockey
Newer materials continue to make inroads into the game
of hockey. There are now aluminum shafts, carbon- graphite shafts, and even
sticks and blades that are entirely made of carbon-graphite. Graphite, carbon-
graphite, and aluminum shafts and sticks provide strength and generally
weigh less than wooden sticks. Some players believe that they shoot better
and stick-handle better due to the new materials. Another reason many players
are switching from wood is that the ideal wood--rock elm--has become scarce
due to Dutch elm disease. Many manufacturers are turning to white ash, which
is not nearly as sturdy as elm.
Mike Aldrich gives a tour of the Sharks stick room.
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Fiberglass, aluminum, and carbon-graphite sticks and blades fill the Sharks
stick room.
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What's in a puck?
Hockey pucks have been around nearly as long as the game
of hockey itself (a ball was used in early games). Depending on who you
talk to, the first use of a puck was in Kingston Harbour, Ontario, Canada
in 1860. While it's unlikely that this first puck was made of rubber, it
wasn't long after that that the rubber puck made its entrance into the game.
Natural rubber is one of the most elastic substances known. A puck is compounded
with other materials to give it strength and to make it less elastic, but
pucks still have a rubbery nature.
To take some of the bounce out of a puck for a game, it's
frozen beforehand, and even kept frozen between periods. Most substances
behave similarly when heated or cooled. Adding heat to a system (the puck)
is essentially the same as adding more energy to it; if the puck is storing
more energy, it will bounce higher.
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To get an idea of how the temperature of the puck affects
its motion, you can experiment at home if you have two spare pucks laying
around. (This will also work with two baseballs.) Put one in the freezer
for a couple of hours while leaving the other one out to sit at room temperature.
Find a flat area of cement where you can drop the two pucks. Drop the pucks
from about waist-high and observe how they bounce after they hit the cement.
Notice that the room temperature puck bounces higher! Then try to drop them
at the same time from a balcony, or simply throw them up in the air at approximately
the same distance. When they hit the ground, watch how the warmer puck bounces
visibly higher than the frozen one.
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Try dropping the puck from a variety of heights. If you are feeling adventurous,
try the same experiment with two golf balls or even better, two super balls!
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Exploratorium
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