During the 2026 Winter Olympics, athletes will leap off ramps, slide across ice and spin through the air. These performances will look different to my students who have studied physics through sports. These feats will be something the students have already measured, modeled or felt. As a physicist, I help my students see the games as a place where classroom lessons come to life.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how abstract ideas such as kinematics, forces, energy, momentum and motion are understood in the real world. Recently, I listened to a meeting of the Clemson football team’s offense to gain an appreciation for what my student-athletes do. But I came out with an idea for a new introductory physics class.
While sitting in the back row, listening to the coach break down the Tigers’ upcoming game, I realized that I could understand every single word said, despite never having played football. Most of the guys were called Sam or Mike, and they continually talked about gaps and boxes. I knew the terminology. I followed the diagrams. I could repeat the language. And yet, I understood absolutely nothing about how that information translated into a strategy for winning the game.
It dawned on me that my confusion is likely similar to how many students experience physics. They can follow the individual pieces, equations, definitions and vocabulary, but they have trouble connecting those pieces to real-world meaning. Physics makes sense as a subject of study, yet it often seems disconnected from everyday life.
I created Clemson’s Physics of Sports class to close the gap. The course begins not with abstract problems or idealized systems, but with sports that people already care about. The class then reveals the physics that make those activities possible.
Physics in skiing
Many introductory, algebra-based physics courses have students study frictionless blocks sliding down imaginary planes. In my course, students analyze the newest Olympic sports.
Ski mountaineering, making its Olympic debut in 2026, requires athletes to climb steep, snow-covered slopes entirely under their own power. My students uncover an elegant physics problem involving friction, the force that resists sliding between surfaces.
Ski mountaineers use friction to go uphill before skiing down.
AP Photo/Antonio Calanni
To accelerate uphill, the skis must experience a small amount of friction while moving in the forward direction. However, the same ski must provide enough friction in the opposite direction to prevent the skier from sliding back down the slope.
Skiers resolve this contradiction using climbing skins on their skis that are engineered to grip the snow in one direction while allowing smooth sliding in the opposite direction. In class, students examine how the skin material’s design helps climbers summit the mountain efficiently.
Students also look at how specialized materials assist in ski jumping.
The…
