Friction in snowboarding allows you to carve and manuever as well as stopping. In physics friction is usally used to cause a negative acceleration or deacceleration and creates heat over time. This physics concept can affect the speed of a snowboarder going down a hill, some snowboards are made differently to decrease the friction so a snowboarder can achieve greater speeds. The basic structure of a snowboard contains materials such as wood and plastic other materials are added to improve performance. Different body shapes to a snowboard can reduce Friction also. There are usually two types of boards, a racing board and a freestyle board. The racing board is skinny and light weight which provides a faster ride down the slope.

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At the top, all the energy is in the form of potential energy and equals: PE = mgh

at the bottom, the boarder's energy is all kinetic, and KE = 1/2 mv^2

if there were any frictional losses, then the KE at the bottom is less than the PE at the top, so we have

PE at top = KE at bottom + frictional losses

so, work done by friction = PE at top - KE at bottom

Where PE=Potential Energy and KE=Kinetic Energy