Why Is the Quad So Difficult in Figure Skating?
I’ll be honest — I really don’t know much about figure skating. It’s not even one of my favorite winter sports to watch. But here we are — thinking about the physics of the quad. Oh, what the heck is a quad? From what I understand, a quad is when a human on skates (other animals don’t count) jumps into the air and spins FOUR times around an axis from the head to the feet. I have to define the axis because a rotation around an axis through the hips would be like a back flip. Apparently, those are illegal.
Now, there are some technical questions about what defines a spin. It seems like it might have to do with the orientation of the skate blade on both take off and landing. But let’s just assume we are talking about 4 complete rotations of the body.
Oh, here is an example of a quad. This is Kamila Valieva — the first female to complete a quad in a competition.
Now we can look at some physics questions.
How fast do you have to spin?
