The Physics of Downhill Skiing

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Recommended: Understanding the physics of skiing

The Physics of Downhill Skiing

You can hardly believe that the day you’ve been waiting for has arrived. After all this time of waiting patiently, Mother Nature has finally decided to cooperate by letting it snow. It was a miracle. The ski resorts had finally opened and in just a few minutes you’d be off the ski lift and ready to soar to the bottom of the mountain. Even though it’s your first time on skis, you’re sure you won’t have any problems. After all, you’re a pretty athletic individual, and you’ve watched skiing on the television during the winter Olympics. Your moment of reflection is put to a halt as your friend slaps you on the chest telling you it’s time to get off. You attempt to leave the chair, but your body quickly makes contact with the cold hard ground. After a long hard day of trying to make it down the hill you head home frustrated and ready to sell your new skis. Your skiing partner tries to console you by telling you that skiing is a complicated sport that involves a lot of physics. The next day you do some research. As you learn more about the physics involved in the sport of skiing, your struggles on the hill are put into prospective. The sport of skiing relies on the physics of Newton’s three laws of motion, gravity, and the concepts of potential and kinetic energy.

The force that allows the skier to head down the hill is gravity. An inexperienced skier may find that gravity causes them to move down the hill faster than they’d like. What is gravity? We all know that gravity is the force that makes a ball, which has been thrown into the air, fall to the ground. Gravity is the force that the earth exerts on an object. As the skier heads down the hill the earth is pulling the skier towards its cen...

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...t the amount of physics involved in downhill skiing. Gravity, energy, and Newton’s three Laws of Motion, are all concepts of physics that greatly affect the sport of skiing. If a beginner skier would take the time to examine these concepts they may find an explanation to why their first day at the ski hill didn’t go as expected.

Works Cited

Kirkpatrick, Larry D., Wheeler, Gerald F. Physics: A World View. Forth ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers, 2001.

Lind, David, and Scott P. Sanders. The Physics of Skiing at the Triple Point. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1996.

Mears, Annie. “Physics of Alpine Skiing.” 18 May 2002. 23 April 2003. <http://www.suberic.net/~avon/mxphysics/anne/Annie%20Mears.htm>

Swinson, Derek B. “Physics and Skiing.” The Physics Teacher 30 Nov 1992, 30. The Physics Classroom. 21 April 2003. <http:www/physicsclassroom.com>

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