You might not be able to tell from my detailed explanation of standing up but I have actually been snowboarding for around 15 years. When you do something for that long the process gets stored in your muscle memory and it becomes second nature - like riding a bicycle. Some of the things I learned along the way I did not fully understand until recent years though. A few years ago I started doing night runs, with only a headlamp and the moon to see by. It is enough to see trees and people, but not ice patches or changes in slope; so I learned a lot about how I actually managed to make it down the hill during the day by doing it at night. I had to feel a lot of it out, and I what I found was that if I followed some basic rules I could make it over unknown terrain without falling.


The most important thing I realized was that I was moving my own momentum in the direction I was moving. The hard part about that is keeping the board centered under that momentum. Under being the hard part: rough snow, ice, sudden changes in slope, and many other factors can cause your board to pull and bounce around in any number of ways. The key was not fighting it, I had to let my board go where the snow took it. Likewise, my momentum would take me with it, my job was just to keep at the right angle, perpendicular to the hill. Pun not intended. When turning on heel or toe your mass needs to be up the hill, with your normal force parallel to the force of gravity, just like when standing. However, when going straight down or in-between turns you want your board flat on the snow, with your normal force perpendicular to the slope of the hill. The trick to this is keeping your legs bent and loose so that they can change with the slope and keep your body pointing straight out from the mountain. This is ideal because when going straight down the board is your pivot. Having your center of mass directly under you will cause you to pivot straight up as you gain velocity.


Considering going faster actually stands you up you might be wondering why not just always go straight down. This is obviously not possible but just for fun lets see how fast that would get you. For approximation I will neglect the forces of friction and drag. With this approximation we can say all the potential energy at the top of the mountain will be transformed to kinetic energy by the bottom. The equation can be simplified to vf = √2gΔh (Knight, 270). We already know the freefall acceleration g = 9.8 m/s2 so all we need is Δh. According to their website Moose Mountain has "1300 feet of vertical" (shredthemoose.com). That's approximately 396 meters in SI units, making the final velocity 88 m/s, that is over 196 miles per hour! Recalculating this using the acceleration of the downhill force we found on the Potential page (-427 N / 70 kgs = 6.1 m/s2) we still get 155 mph. Drag would not let someone get that fast, but we have not learned about terminal velocity yet so I will just leave it at you can get going way too fast. That is why adept snowboarders turn from heel to toe down steep inclines, this is called carving and is a necessary skill for managing your speed on the slopes.

Here is a great site I found that I hope to add some content based on if I ever make an update to this site. If you are really into this there are many other great resources out there for physics, but nothing will teach you to board like actually getting out there and doing it. But if you really want more feel free to go back to POTENTIAL.

References

Knight, Randall Dewey. "Physics for scientists and engineers -- 3rd ed." textbook, 2013, James Smith
'Moose Mountain Ski Resort. "Come Shred the Moose." web, 2016, Northern Skies, shredthemoose.com
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