Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Physics of Aerial Skiing

The New York Times has a nice article on the physics of freestyle aerial skiing, one of the sports in the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The Times article also has an accompanying video, on which diagrams of curves and arrows are periodically superimposed to illustrate physics concepts. The primary concept discussed is angular (or rotational) momentum. I wrote about angular momentum as pertaining to figure skating four years ago, in connection with the last Winter Olympics.