Science of the Winter Olympics - Snowboarding

The stakes are high for the snowboarders in Vancouver as they try to master new tricks to unseat the star of Torino, American Shaun White. But to get "max air" off the half-pipe without losing their balance, they 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 of water. NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBC News, has teamed up with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to produce Science of the Olympic Winter Games, a 16-part video series that explores the science behind individual Olympic events, including Downhill and Aerial Skiing, Speed Skating and Figure Skating, Curling and Hockey, and Ski Jumping, Bobsledding and Snowboarding. For more, go to http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/olympics/