Sunday, November 30, 2008


So this past weekend me and a couple of friends went down to a park converted from a landfill. Now the only question remaining is what you do at this kind of park. There is only one thing you can do, box sliding. This entails getting a very large piece of cardboard and diving down a hill over coming friction and speeding down the hill. The reason you use cardboard is because it has a lower coefficient of friction making sliding easier. If you chose not to use cardboard you would find your shirt ripped up and a lot of burns on the front of your body. Your weight and initial momentum wouldn't allow you to go much further than a few feet. The physics behind box sliding is fairly simple. You push off from the the top of the hill and start moving down. The cardboard has lower friction causing a longer ride. You continue to move down accelerating as the force of weight and normal force overcomes the force of friction. You continue to slide at a fairly constant rate until the hill starts to taper and friction force starts to overcome weight and normal force slowing the box usually faster than it slows you causing you to hold on tight until both you and the box come to complete stops.

Thanks for reading, Mark.

PS. I was going to post a video of box sliding but I haven't been emailed it yet. I'll put that up later.

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