Ice and snow track tester to facilitate Beijing Winter Olympics

BEIJING -- An alpine skiing athlete's performance during a giant slalom or downhill relies on the conditions of the ice and snow. Chinese researchers have developed two instruments to measure the size of snow particles and to evaluate the hardness of the snow.

The instruments will be used in the upcoming Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, as well as polar expeditions in the future.

Personal experience was previously the main method of testing slope conditions. The new instruments provide more accurate and clear indexes to gather data on the quality of ice and snow, according to researchers from the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences (CAMS) and the Nanjing Institute of Astronomical Optics and Technology of the National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

They tested the particle size and hardness of ice and snow in different weather conditions and water injection intensities on three slopes from November 2020 to March 2021.

Upon completion of the research, charts and graphs were created to show averages of the particle sizes and hardness of the ice and snow.

The snow particle size detector and hardness tester take artificial snowmaking into full account, showing stable and reliable performance, said Ding Minghu, a researcher with the CAMS.