Camping for Everyone!

Camping is an outdoor recreational activity. The participants (known as campers) leave urban areas, their home region, or civilization and enjoy nature while spending one or several nights outdoors, usually at a campsite. Camping may involve the use of a tent, caravan, motorhome, cabin, a primitive structure, or no shelter at all. In many parts of the world[where?], camping refers exclusively to the use of tents or similar portable structures. Camping as a recreational activity became popular in the early 20th century. Campers frequent national or state parks, other publicly owned natural areas, and privately owned campgrounds. Camping is a key part of many youth organizations around the world, such as scouting. It is used to teach self-reliance and teamwork. Camping is also used as a inexpensive form of accommodation for people attending large open air events such as sporting meetings and music festivals. Organizers often provide a field and other basic amenities. Camping describes a range of activities. Survivalist campers set off with little more than their boots, whereas recreational vehicle travelers arrive equipped with their own electricity, heat, and patio furniture. Camping is often enjoyed in conjunction with activities, such as: canoeing, climbing, fishing, hill walking, mountain biking, motorcycling, swimming, and whitewater kayaking. Camping may also be combined with hiking, either as backpacking or as a series of day hikes from a central location. Some people vacation in permanent camps with cabins and other facilities (such as hunting camps or children's summer camps), but a stay at such a camp is usually not considered camping. The term camping (or camping out) may also be applied to those who live outdoors, out of necessity (as in the case of the homeless), or for people waiting overnight in queues. It does not, however, apply to cultures whose technology does not include sophisticated dwellings. Camping may be referred to colloquially as roughing it, and usually lasts for more than a day.

Nice to Meet You - Ice Skating!

Ice skating is moving on ice by using ice skates. It can be done for a variety of reasons, including health benefits, leisure, traveling, and various sports. Ice skating occurs both on specially prepared indoor and outdoor tracks, as well as on naturally occurring bodies of frozen water, such as lakes and rivers.



Ice skating works because the metal blade at the bottom of the skate shoe can glide with very little friction over the surface of the ice. However, slightly leaning the blade over and digging one of its edges into the ice ("rock over and bite") gives skaters the ability to increase friction and control their movement at will. The blade only moves forward and backward, and any violation of that principle results in skidding. In addition, by choosing to move along curved paths while leaning their bodies radially and flexing their knees, skaters can use gravity to control and increase their momentum. They can also create momentum by pushing the blade against the curved track which it cuts into the ice. Skillfully combining these two actions of leaning and pushing— a technique known as "drawing"— results in what looks like effortless and graceful curvilinear flow across the ice. How the low-friction surface develops is not known exactly, but a large body of knowledge does exist. These are explained below. Experiments show that ice has a minimum kinetic friction at -7 °C (19 °F), and many indoor skating rinks set their system to a similar temperature. The low amount of friction actually observed has been difficult for physicists to explain, especially at lower temperatures. On the surface of any body of ice at a temperature above about -20 °C (-4 °F), there is always a thin film of liquid water, ranging in thickness from only a few molecules to thousands of molecules. This is because an abrupt end to the crystalline structure is not the most entropically favorable possibility. The thickness of this liquid layer depends almost entirely on the temperature of the surface of the ice, with higher temperatures giving a thicker layer. However, skating is possible at temperatures much lower than -20 °C, at which temperature there is no naturally occurring film of liquid. When the blade of an ice skate passes over the ice, the ice undergoes two kinds of changes in its physical state and a change in temperature due to kinetic friction and the heat of melting.