How Do Snowboarders at the Winter Olympics Get Such a Long Hangtime?

How do snowboarders in the Olympic events get

such a long hang time?

How are they in the air for so long?

The physics of a snowboarder in the air is the same

as a tennis ball in the air.

Both of them move up while they're accelerating down,

get to a highest point and come back down.

So let's say that we want a snowboarder

to have a hang time of two seconds.

That means one second up, one second down.

We can use two definitions in physics.

The first is the definition of acceleration, which tells us

how fast the velocity changes.

And then we have the definition of average velocity,

which tells us how the position changes.

We can use those two together

to first find the velocity needed to launch up.

So if you wanna get to the highest point

with a zero velocity, you need to start off with a speed

of 9.8 meters per second.

That's 21.9 miles per hour.

That's pretty fast, so you gotta go really

fast to get up that high.

Next, we can use that same velocity in the time

to find out how high it went.

This is combining these two equations right here.

If I have a total time of one second to get

to the highest point, I'm gonna get 9.8 meters high.

That's 32 feet.

So the answer is that they get so high

and they stay in the air for so long

because they're going so fast.

You're never gonna be able to jump like that.

Not even the best basketball player's gonna have

a two second hang time and jump 9.8 meters high.

It's just not gonna happen.