Physics behing skiing

2017-04-14 ,  Jan Cech, 

   Downhill skiing is a sport activity, closely related to physics due to Energy Transformation.  Skiers begins their ride at the lift. The work is done on the skier to lift the him on the top of a hill. Once the skier stands on top of the hill, he has huge amount of potential energy, but zero kinetic energy Potential energy - the energy of vertical position - depends on the mass of the object, its elevation and gravitational acceleration.
More information about how to reduce friction below:
http://www.bendsource.com/bend/the-science-of-ski-wax-theres-a-lot-more-to-it-than-melting-a-candle-over-the-base-of-your-favorite-boards-before-heading-out-the-door/Content?oid=2139915

Transition between energies 
    As the skier starts going down, his potential energy decreases with the elevation  loss, while gravitational acceleration and mass stay constant. Thanks to conservation of energy, the potential energy is transferred into kinetic energy. In real world the energy transformation is not ideal and losses occur due to air drag and friction between skis and snow. Elite skiers try to eliminate this air drag and friction wearing aerodynamics spandex and applying wax on skis, which happens to lower friction coefficient, respectively. I will further focus more on kinetic energy and neglect friction and air drag. Kinetic energy - the energy of motion - depends on the mass of the object and the speed of the object.

    The skier accelerated down the hill as he loses elevation. The speed or its derivation, (acceleration) depend on the slope of the hill. The bigger the magnitude of the slope is the larger the acceleration is. Thus, so the acceleration is not constant and changes with the slope. If we consider no air resistance and snow friction, the energy is conserved. If there was an uphill at the bottom of the hill the kinetic energy would not grow anymore, but it would decrease, while the potential energy would increase again and the skier would gain elevation.