skateboarding!

This weekend, I was doing some cleaning when I stumbled upon my cousin's old skateboard that he gave me. At first, I didn't remember why he gave it to me cause he was pretty into skateboarding at the time, but after riding it outside, I realized why. I went at most like 5 feet before I came to a complete stop. Ok, that's probably a huge exaggeration, but yeah the wheels were pretty junk. Anyway, when I was riding it, I realized that skateboarding was filled with physics concepts that we were learning in class including all of the forces acting on the skateboard including friction. The wheels on the skateboard were pretty fat, which meant that there was a greater amount of surface area touching the ground. Also, they were not smooth at all, which contributed to the high friction. It didn't help that I was trying to ride it on the gravel, but nonetheless, I did not travel very far although I would I would kick as hard as I could. A couple people were walking by when I was experimenting with my skateboard, and I didn't look but I'm pretty they sure laughing at me. Anyway, this takes me to another force: the force that I applied to the skateboard to make it travel. In addition, weight, which is my mass plus the skateboard's mass times gravity, was being applied directly downwards on the skateboard. Also, there was a normal force being applied perpendicular to the ground, which was equal to the weight of the skateboard and me. Therefore, there were four forces applied to the skateboard when I was riding it. Crazy stuff.