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Beneath Olympic ice
冬奧會的冰是怎么“凍”出來的？
Although the weather is very hot now, the carnival of ice and snow is getting closer. The preparation work for Beijing Winter Olympic Games, which are expected to begin on Feb 4, 2022, has entered its final stage. In January, the ice-making work on the “Ice Ribbon”, a landmark venue for the Beijing Winter Olympics, was completed.
雖然現(xiàn)在天氣十分炎熱，但是冰雪的狂歡日益臨近。北京冬奧會將于2022年2月4日正式開幕，目前籌辦工作已進入最后沖刺階段。今年1月，北京冬奧會標志性場館“冰絲帶”已完成制冰工作。
In the Winter Olympics, where races can be won or lost by a small time gap, tiny imperfections in the ice can make all the difference. “It’s not just a hunk of ice like you’d normally think of, like ice cubes sitting in your freezer,” Kenneth Golden, a US mathematician who studies the structures of ice, told Smithsonian magazine. “It’s a much more fascinating and complex substance than people would normally think.”
在冬奧會中，比賽勝負可能就在分秒之間，冰面上的小瑕疵會產生重要影響。“這不是你平時以為的一大塊冰，比如冰箱里的冰塊，”研究冰結構的美國數(shù)學家肯尼思·戈爾登在接受《史密森雜志》采訪時表示。“這種物質比大家平時想的要有趣和復雜得多。”
The first step for building any rink is to purify the water to remove dissolved solids like salts and minerals. Such impurities don’t fit in the regular hexagonal structure of ice that forms as water freezes. The more pure the water is, the more consistent the ice surface, according to Smithsonian.
建造任何滑冰場的第一步是提純水，去除溶解在其中的固體，比如鹽和礦物質。這些雜質與水凍結時所形成的冰內正六邊形結構不匹配。水越純凈，冰面就越平滑穩(wěn)固，《史密森雜志》介紹到。
In addition to the need for excellence in the raw materials of ice-making, technology is also very important. As one of the most advanced technologies for winter sports venues, a carbon dioxide (CO2) cooling technology has been applied on a large scale for the Beijing Winter Olympic Games. CO2 is not new when it comes to ice-making. For more than 100 years, CO2 has been used as a refrigerant in Europe. However, it has been gradually replaced by the synthetic refrigerant, like Freon, according to Xinhua.
除了要有優(yōu)質的制冰原材料，科技也至關重要。作為冬季運動場館最先進的技術之一，二氧化碳跨臨界直冷制冰技術在北京冬奧會進行大規(guī)模應用。用二氧化碳制冰并不新鮮。據(jù)新華社報道，早在100多年前，二氧化碳就被作為制冷劑在歐洲使用。但它逐漸被人工合成制冷劑氟利昂所取代。
With increasing attention toward climate change, the old refrigerant has come into use again. As an element of the atmosphere, CO2 doesn’t damage the ozone layer. Although CO2 is a greenhouse gas, its greenhouse effect is much lower than that of other synthetic refrigerants.
隨著人們對氣候變化的日益關注，這種古老的制冷劑被再次使用。二氧化碳作為大氣的組成成分之一，不會破壞臭氧層。二氧化碳雖是溫室氣體，但溫室效應遠低于其他人工合成制冷劑。
The Winter Olympics venues adopted CO2 instead of Freon as a refrigerant in ice-making, which will reduce carbon dioxide emissions greatly.
北京冬奧會場館采用二氧化碳作為制冷劑，而非氟利昂，將大大降低二氧化碳排放量。
“That’s very good for the whole sustainability of the Games,” William Freyr Huntingdon-Williams, the first secretary and deputy head of mission at the Embassy of Iceland, told Xinhua.
“這對整個冬奧會可持續(xù)發(fā)展是非常好的，”冰島大使館一等秘書、使團副團長威廉·弗萊爾·亨廷登·威廉姆斯在接受新華社采訪時表示。
“We believe these technological innovations will bring Beijing 2022 to spectators all over the world in a more spectacular way,” Gao Bo from the media operations department of the Organizing Committee of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games told Xinhua.
“我們相信這些技術創(chuàng)新將讓北京冬奧會更加精彩地呈現(xiàn)在全球觀眾面前，”北京冬奧組委媒體運行部高博在接受新華社采訪時表示。
