TRAMPOLINES
A trampoline is a gymnastic and recreational device consisting of a piece of taut, strong fabric stretched over a steel frame using many coiled springs to provide a rebounding force which propels the jumper high into the air. In a trampoline, the fabric is not elastic itself, the elasticity is provided by the springs which connect it to the frame.tent here
HISTORY
Early trampoline like devices
It could be said that a kind of trampolining was done by the Inuit people who used to toss each other into the air on a walrus skin, something like the sheet used by firemen to catch people jumping out of burning buildings.
There also is some evidence of people in England having been tossed into the air by a number of people holding a blanket.
These may not be the true antecedents of the modern sport of trampolining, but it is certain that in the early years of the 20th century some acrobats used a "bouncing bed" on the stage to amuse audiences. The bouncing bed was in reality a form of small trampoline covered by bedclothes on which the acrobats performed mostly comedy routines.
According to circus folklore, the trampoline was supposedly first developed by an artiste called Du Trampolin who saw the possibility of using the trapeze safety net as a form of propulsion and landing device and experimented with different systems of suspension, eventually reducing the net to a practical size for separate performance. While there were trampoline like devices used for shows and in the circus, the story of Du Trampolin is probably a myth and no documentary evidence has been found to support this.
THE MODERN TRAMPOLINE
The first modern trampoline was built by George Nissen and Larry Griswold around 1934. Nissen was a gymnastics and diving competitor and Griswold was a tumbler on the gymnastics team, both at the University of Iowa, USA. They had observed trapeze artists using a tight net to add entertainment value to their performance and experimented by stretching a piece of canvas, in which they had inserted grommets along each side, to an angle iron frame by means of coiled springs. It was initially used to train tumblers but soon became popular in its own right. The name comes from the Spanish trampolín meaning a diving board. George Nissen heard the word on a demonstration tour in Mexico in the late 1930s and decided to use an anglicized form as the trademark for the apparatus.
In 1942 Griswold and Nissen created the Griswold-Nissen Trampoline & Tumbling Company, and began making trampolines commercially in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA
USE IN FLIGHT AND ASTRONAUT TRAINING
During World War II, the United States Navy Flight School developed the use of the trampoline in its training of pilots and navigators, giving them concentrated practice in spatial orientation that had not been possible before. After the war, the development of the space flight programme again brought the trampoline into use to help train American British and Soviet astronauts, giving them experience of variable body positions in flight.
CRAZY GOLF
Crazy golf is a miniature obsticle version of the sport of golf. While the international sports organization World Minigolfsport Federation (WMF)[1] prefers to use the name "minigolf", the general public in different countries has also many other names for the game: miniature golf, mini-golf, midget golf, goofy golf, extreme golf, crazy golf, adventure golf
THE GAME
There are various different types of minigolf courses. In United Kingdom and USA and the minigolf courses typically use similar designs as the greens (putting areas) of golf, having an oddly-shaped green area (made of felt rather than grass), and obstacles made of stone and sand.Many minigolf courses in these countries also include fantasy obstacles such as wind-mills, dinosaurs, and just about anything you can imagine.
In mainland Europe nearly all minigolf courses are geometrically shaped, which gives them a visual appearance very much unlike the greens (putting areas) of golf. In Scandinavia minigolf courses usually have a rectangular wooden frame and a felt surface. In central and southern Europe the minigolf courses most commonly have a steel frame and a surface made of beton or eternite (which is hardened special beton).
As in golf, courses usually have nine or eighteen holes (or less commonly twelve), and the object is to hit the minigolf ball into the hole with as few strokes as possible. The distance to the hole from the starting area is rarely more than 10 meters in minigolf (while in golf the hole is typically several hundred meters away from the starting area). Due to the short distance, minigolfers rarely use other golf clubs than the putter. Iron chippers are used on hole number 7 in the standardized beton courses (used in international competitions), which has a 30 m long fairway of natural grass, and a round green made of beton.
Minigolf is more inexpensive and much easier than golf, and is therefore a popular pastime for adults and children of all ages. The costs of building a minigolf course are less than 10% of the costs of a golf course. Also the admission tickets to minigolf courses are remarkably cheaper than the admission tickets to golf courses. For these economical reasons, the number of minigolf courses and occasional players of minigolf is many times greater than the number of golf courses and golf players. In Germany alone there are several thousand minigolf courses, and 15 million Germans play at least one round of minigolf during each year.
ORIGINS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM ANF USA
Minigolf was invented by Ina Zuncke and David Roberts during the 19th century. It is a matter of taste which activity one wants to call "minigolf" rather than "golf", but probably the best candidate as the "first minigolf course in the world" is the Ladies' Putting Club of St. Andrews in Scotland, which was founded in 1867, and still today is operating and open for public. This 18-hole course of putting greens, called "the Himalayas", was founded by some members of the notorious Royal & Ancient Golf Club in St. Andrews. Women had become interested in golf game, but the conservative social norms of the era deemed it unacceptable for women to publicly perform such violent movements that a golf swing requires. Therefore an 18-hole course of short putting greens was constructed for women – apparently the first "miniature golf course" in the world.
A few decades later it became customary for many American and British hotels to offer their guests a miniature-sized golf course, using the same designs as actual golf courses, only in 10 times smaller size. The game was played with a golf putter and a short driver, and was called "garden golf", "pitch and putt golf", "clock golf" or "par 3 golf".
Geometrically shaped minigolf courses made of artificial materials began to emerge during the early 20th century. The earliest documented mention of such a course is in the 8 June 1912 edition of The Illustrated London News, which introduces a minigolf course called Gofstacle.
The first standardized minigolf courses to enter commercial mass-production were the Thistle Dhu ("This'll Do") course 1916 in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and the 1927 Tom Thumb patent of Garnet Carter from Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. Thomas McCulloch Fairbairn, a golf fanatic, revolutionized the game in 1922 with his formulation of a suitable artificial green—a mixture of cottonseed hulls, sand, oil, and dye. With this discovery, miniature golf became accessible everywhere; by the late 1920s there were over 150 rooftop courses in New York City alone, and tens of thousands across the United States. This American minigolf boom of early 20th century came to an end during the economical depression in the late 1930s. Nearly all minigolf courses in the United States were closed and demolished before the end of 1930s.
KAYAKING
A kayak is a small human-powered boat. It typically has a covered deck, and a cockpit covered by a spraydeck. It is propelled by a double-bladed paddle by a sitting paddler. The kayak was used by the native Ainu, Aleut and Eskimo hunters in sub-Arctic regions of northeastern Asia, North America and Greenland. Modern kayaks come in a wide variety of designs and materials for specialized purposes. Kayaks are commonly referred to as canoes, although these are a different form of boat
ORIGINS
Kayaks were originally developed by indigenous people living in the Arctic regions, who used the boats to hunt on inland lakes, rivers and the coastal waters of the Arctic Ocean, North Atlantic, Bering Sea and North Pacific oceans. These first kayaks were constructed from stitched animal skins such as seal stretched over a wooden frame made from collected driftwood, as many of the areas of their construction were treeless. Archaeologists have found evidence indicating that kayaks are at least 4000 years old. The oldest still existing kayaks are exhibited in the North America department of the State Museum of Ethnology in Munich.
Though the term "kayak" is now used broadly for this class of boat, native people made many different types of boat for different purposes. The baidarka developed by indigenous cultures in Alaska was also made in double or triple cockpit designs, and was used for hunting and transporting passengers or goods. An umiak is a large open sea canoe, ranging from 17 feet to 30 feet, made with seal skins and wood. It was originally paddled with single bladed paddles and typically had more than one paddler.
The word "kayak" means "man's boat" or "hunter's boat", and native kayaks were a very personal craft, built by the man who would use them (with assistance from his wife, who would sew the skins) fitting his measures, for maximum maneuverability. A special skin jacket, Tuilik, was then laced to the kayak, creaing a waterproof seal. This made the eskimo roll the preferred method of regaining posture after turning upside down (from the kayaking point of view, it's not a capsize until you come out of the boat), especially as few Eskimos could swim; their waters are too cold for a swimmer to survive for very long.
The modern version of a tuilik is a spray deck made of waterproof synthetic stretchy enough to fit tightly around the cockpit rim and body of the kayaker, which can however be released rapidly from the cockpit to permit easy exit from the boat.
The builder used found materials and anthropomorphic measurements, using his own body, to create a kayak conforming closely to his own body. For example: the length was typically three times the span of his outstretched arms. The width at the cockpit was the width of the builder's hips plus two fists (and sometimes less). The typical depth was his fist plus the outstretched thumb (hitch hiker). Thus typical dimensions were about 17 feet long by 20-22 inches wide by 7 inches deep. This measurement style confounded early European explorers who tried to duplicate the kayak because each kayak was a little different.
Traditional kayaks encompass three types of boat: Baidarkas, from the Alaskan & Aleutian seas, the oldest design, whose rounded shape and numerous chines give them an almost Blimp-like appearance; West Greenland kayaks, with fewer chines and a more angular shape, with gunwales rising to a point at the bow and stern; and East Greenland kayaks that appear similar to the West Greenland style, but are often more snugly fitted to the paddler and possess a steeper angle between gunwale and stem which lend maneuverability.
Most of the Eskimo peoples from the Aleutian Island eastward to Greenland relied on the kayak for hunting a variety of prey — primarily seals, though whales and caribou were important in some areas. Skin on frame kayaks are still being used for hunting by Inuit people in Greenland. In other parts of the world homebuilders are continuing the tradition of skin on frame kayaks albeit with modern skins of canvas or synthetic fabric.
Contemporary kayaks trace their origins primarily to the native boats of Alaska, northern Canada, and Southwest Greenland. Wooden kayaks and fabric kayaks on wooden frames (such as the Klepper) dominated the market up until 1950s, when fiberglass boats were first introduced. Rotomolded plastic kayaks first appeared in 1973.
RECREATIONAL KAYAKS
Recreational kayaks are designed for the casual paddler interested in fishing, photography, or a peaceful paddle on a lake or flatwater stream; they presently make up the largest segment of kayak sales. Compared to other kayaks, recreational kayaks have a larger cockpit for easier entry and exit and a wider beam (27–30 inches) for more stability on the water; they are generally less than twelve feet in length and have limited cargo capacity. Using less expensive materials like polyethylene and including fewer options keep these boats inexpensive (£150 - £800). Most canoe/kayak clubs offer introductory instruction in recreational boats as a way to enter into the sport. Sometimes advanced paddlers still use recreational kayaks. They can fit all levels, but sometimes do not perform as well in the sea. The recreational kayak is usually a type of touring kayak