Snowboarder jump—energy and momentum

in this activity, you will analyze a snowboarder’s motion in terms of energy and momentum.

to begin your activity, open this tracker experiment: snowboard jump energy.

click play to watch the video. the other video controls allow you to rewind the video or step forward or backward one frame at a time.

observe the video and answer the following questions.

part a

what can you say about the snowboarder’s kinetic energy as he moves?

part b

similarly, what can you say about the potential energy of the snowboarder?

part c

now, in the tracker tool, add kinetic energy, ke, and potential energy, pe, to your table. (click on table, then check ke and pe in the table columns dialog.) also, adapt the two graphs to show kinetic energy and potential energy vs. time. (click on the vertical axis labels; from the pop-up menu, select ke or pe.)

step forward through the video a frame at a time, tracking the process in the table and on the two graphs. based on your observations, what can you say about your predictions in part a and part b concerning the potential and kinetic energy?

part d

you observed the motion of the snowboarder and analyzed the kinetic, potential, and total energy of the system. now what can you say about the momentum of the snowboarder during this video?

part e

now, show both horizontal momentum, px, and vertical momentum, py, in the table. also change the graphs to display px and py against time. based on the table values and the graphs, what can you say about your prediction regarding momentum?