![]() ![]() If you have your feet too far forward or too far back, you’ll tip.īryce Wettstein of Team USA competes during the park final. Keeping your feet on the bolts, especially during a high-force landing, is critical. When you’re looking at a board from above, you can see the bolts where the trucks and wheels are attached. “When skaters make tricks with big ollies, like going down a stair set or down a drop, they always talk about ‘landing bolts,’” he says. The key to a good landing is keeping your feet over the wheels, Roberston explains How to land on a skateboard, with physics “At some point, gravity’s going to win, no matter how fast you’re going,” Robertson says. The speed of the take-off (and the jumping ability of the skater) affects the amplitude, or height, of the jump, which takes the shape of a parabolic arc. Thrust is what moves the board forward, lift is what moves it upward, drag from the air pushes backward, and weight is gravity’s way of pulling it back down. (An ollie was one of the moves seen during Olympic street competitions - for example, Team USA’s Jagger Eaton pulled off a backside 360 ollie.)Īny time the board is in the air, explains Robertson, it’s at the mercy of the same forces as an airplane: lift, thrust, drag, and weight. Skaters use their front foot to level out the board to make their landing pad. Part of keeping the board underfoot is timing, that is, making sure the skater’s jump is in line with the board’s trajectory. The most basic skateboard move is the ollie, where skaters jump off the ground with the board and land back down. Jagger Eaton competes at the street portion of the Tokyo Olympic Games. It’s the forceful push downward on the board (and the board’s subsequent contact with the ground) that launches it back in the air. The same tenant is invoked when the skateboarders “pop,” or jump off the ground with their board perfectly in tow. It’s Newton’s third law: For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. When a skateboarder keeps one foot on the board, while using the other to push down on the ground, they propel themselves forward with the same amount of force that they’re pushing backward. Even just to ride a skateboard across the flat ground, you need some physics. His specialty is teaching physics through - you guessed it - skateboarding.Īn equal and opposite reaction - Let’s start with the basics. Robertson is a professor of STEM education at the University of Texas at El Paso. ![]() How do they do it? Inverse asked Bill Robertson, also known as Dr. These tricks seem to defy the laws of physics, but it’s quite the opposite: These athletes have learned to harness physics to jump, flip, and somehow keep the board aligned under their feet. In park, specific moves include hand plants, grinds, alley-oops, and grabs. Both competitions center on the second of the two Olympic skateboarding disciplines: park, as compared to last week’s street.ĭuring the competition, skateboarders are judged on the quality, difficulty, and originality of their tricks, flips, and rotations. The last men’s event will air at 10:00 pm EST on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Japan’s Sakura Yosozumi won gold at the final women’s skateboarding event. A new sport arrived on the Olympic scene in 2021: skateboarding.
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