The Olympics may be over, but teachers and parents are still using the science behind the games to educate children.
Ice skating is a classic lesson in physics. When an ice skater spins, they are using angular momentum. In a spin, their arms act as weights. When arms are extended, the skater spins slowly. When the skater changes their moment of inertia and bring their arms into their body, they spin faster.
I brought this demonstration to Becky Ditchfield on the morning newscast. It’s my rule to never practice ahead of time with Becky. So, what you see on TV is the first time she’s ever seen the demo. I guess she’s sensitive to getting dizzy because she could barely read the teleprompter at the end of the segment. If I hadn’t of caught her, she would have spun into a half million dollar camera.
Curling became an Olympic sport in 1998. It’s an unusual sport to many.
The sport involves one player thrusting a huge “rock” or stone down a sheet of ice. Two other players sweep a path, guiding the rock to the center of the target called the “house.” At the end of play, the team with the most rocks near the center of the house is the winner.
Getting a curling stone from the start to the house is all physics. Force and friction is what makes it all work.
It all starts with a push out of a “hack.” The curler positions their foot to push out of the hack with a lot of force to accelerate with the curling rock. The curler’s force is then transferred to the rock.
Then the sweepers take over. The brush they use is made from a synthetic material that has a little abrasiveness. The objective of sweeping is to make the rock go farther and very slightly alter the rock’s path.
When curling began and was a sport outside, the brushes
Flying down a ramp at speeds over 60 miles per hour, jumping off the edge, gliding through the air and then landing two football fields away is what Olympic ski jumpers do everyday.
Ski jumping requires a complex manipulation of forces – gravity, drag and lift.
A ski jumper has two contradictory missions with two very different positions. One is to get down the ramp or inrun as fast as possible, gaining maximum speed. The second is to takeoff into the air and fly as far as possible.
As a ski jumper hurdles down the inrun, they try to gain speed. The air around them creates resistance. To minimize the drag, a skier needs to be in a streamlined position – chest parallel to the snow, head down and arms back.
When the skier reaches take off, their body needs to readjust and change position. In a tenth of a second, the skier straightens upward and leans forward to maximize lift. Once in the air, the skier isn’t concerned with drag, but is instead working to use the air to lift
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Every four years, the stakes get higher for figure skaters at the Olympics as they try to increase rotation in the air with their triple axels and quadruple toe loops. Figure skating is one of the most demanding sports at the Olympics.
It is a complicated skill with a lot of different motions. Skaters need to optimize a lot of different conditions – speed, force, vertical velocity and angular momentum. All with exact timing.
Angular momentum is an important piece of jumping in skating. It determines how fast a skater can rotate. The more angular momentum, the higher the potential to spin.
Skaters generate angular momentum by pushing off the ice with their skates.
Pushing off the ice also generates vertical velocity. Vertical velocity gets a skater high enough in the air to do the spin by producing forces from the jump during takeoff.
What happens is an action and a reaction. As the leg muscles contract and the leg pushes down against the ice, the ice creates a force that pushes back on the legs, creating vertical velocity. The more velocity a
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Believe it or not, snowboarding is a study in potential and kinetic energy. The athletes who maximize both kinds of energy are the ones on the medal podium at the Vancouver Olympics.
Twelve years ago, snowboarding made its debut as an Olympic sport. The sport isn’t just about crazy lingo, going fast and jumping high. The athletes use the laws of gravity to build speed and keep their balance. They also use physics to gain speed and height in jumps.
The physics of snowboarding uses dynamic balance. When the snowboarder is in motion moving up and down the ramps, their balance is different than if they were just going down a slope.
As gravity pulls the snowboarders down the halfpipe, they gain speed. At the same time, they are being pushed against the sides by contact forces.
Snowboarders push back against the G-forces and build speed by pumping their legs up and down. By standing up against the extra forces in the curve, snowboarders add to their kinetic energy – the energy of motion. It gives them the speed
