How skateboarders accelerate optimally on a halfpipe
With the right pumping movement, athletes can achieve a higher speed. Physicists have carried out a modelling study to find out exactly how.
To gain extra speed, skateboarders on a halfpipe alternately squat down and stand up again at the right moment as they board up the curved walls. Physicists have now calculated how a skater can optimise this "pumping" movement. The team led by Florian Kogelbauer from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich reports the results of the study in the journal Physical Review Research. In a real-life experiment, it was subsequently found that experienced skateboarders actually skate closer to this optimum than inexperienced skateboarders.
Over the decades, skateboarding has developed into a popular sport with a rich repertoire of tricks and its own culture. Formerly known as "tarmac surfing", the sport emerged in the 1950s when Californian surfers didn't want to give up surfing even in flat seas. In 2021, it was even included as an official discipline in the Summer Olympics. From a scientific perspective, the dynamics of skateboarding serve as a versatile playground for classical mechanics.
For their optimisation study, the scientists working with Kogelbauer created a computer model of a skateboarder with a variable centre of gravity, a kind of Tony Hawk stick figure. The principle is similar to the movement of a person on a swing. The pumping motion corresponds to a pendulum with a variable length; kinetic energy is converted into potential energy in the cylindrical part of the ramp surface, and friction also slows the skater down. The model shows what happens when the skater stands up during the ride, an action that brings additional energy into his movement. This allowed the authors to determine which change in posture accelerates the skater the most.
The authors write that the results could not only help skateboarders to improve their performance, but could also reveal the perfect take-off point for ski jumpers, for example. It could also be used to improve existing software that controls robots on wheels.
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