Free Body Diagram of a Snowboaarder at Rest
In the situation I depict above, a snowboarder is on a level surface, that is the surface is perpendicular to the direction of the force of gravity. The black arrow represents the force of gravity and the blue arrow is the force of the snow covered earth pushing back against the snowboarder! The last part seems a bit counter-intuitive and you need to think about it.
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Sir Isaac Newton
Newton’s first law of motion states: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. This is like a pool of water deep in a mineshaft, it appears to be 1′ deep, but is actually 30′ or more deep.
By motion we mean velocity which is a vector quantity. That is, we have to consider speed as well as direction. In this discussion we will focus on speed.
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Sir Isaac Newton
Certainly, one does not compute vectors consciously while skiing anymore than Aaron Rodgers or Brett Favre computes the velocity the football needs to be traveling to hit the receiver 20 yards down field. Still, understanding the math and physics behind what we do can be useful in understanding the whys and hows of skiing.
We start off discussing vectors.
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