The physics of doing an ollie on a skateboard

This is fun…Aatish Bhatia maps out the forces and motions involved in doing an ollie on a skateboard.

It’s a neat piece of science art, and it also tells us something interesting. The arrows show us that the force on the skateboard is constantly changing, both in magnitude as well as in direction. Now the force of gravity obviously isn’t changing, so the reason that these force arrows are shrinking and growing and tumbling around is that the skater is changing how their feet pushes and pulls against the board. By applying a variable force that changes both in strength and direction, they’re steering the board.

• Aatish Bhatia
• physics
• science
• skateboarding
• sports