In the sport of freestyle aerials, skiers are judged on their ability to perform complex jumps in the air. Emily Cook, a 12-year veteran of the U.S. Freestyle team, and Paul Doherty, a Senior Scientist at the Exploratorium in San...

One of the most popular team sports in the Winter Olympics is hockey. More than just a physical game, for scientists, it's a showcase for physics on ice - especially when it comes to the slapshot. Three-time Olympian Julie Chu, Thomas...

Every four years, we watch the stakes for Olympic figure skaters get higher, as they try to increase rotation in the air with their triple axels and quadruple toe loops. How do they do that? It's a scientific principle that Olympic...

The ice skates worn by hockey players, figure skaters and speed skaters are vastly different from what were once used. Melissa Hines, the Director of the Cornell University Center for Materials Research, and Sam Colbeck, a retired...

Speed skating is all about force and movement - what, in physics, are known as Newton's First Three Laws of Motion. J.R. Celski, a U.S. speed skater, and physicist George Tuthill of Plymouth State University explain.

The winter games in Vancouver provided a chance for the United States' four-man bobsled team to win its first gold medal in more than 60 years. With the help of Paul Doherty, senior scientist at the Exploratorium in San Francisco,...

In skiing events like the downhill, slalom or ski jump, it's often the skis that are bound to an athlete's feet - and the materials used to make them - that give these athletes an edge over the competition. U.S. Ski Team members Julia...

To get "max air" off the half-pipe without losing their balance, snowboarders might want to check out this experiment that Paul Doherty, a senior scientist at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, cooked up, using a skateboard and a glass...

Curling has been in the Winter Olympics for a while now, but it still seems a little strange to most of us. John Shuster, the captain - or "skip" - of the U.S. Curling Team in the Vancouver Winter Olympics, explains this unusual sport,...

Physics video lecture (1:16:39) that uses football to illustrate physics principles.