We recently completed our annual outreach trip to Mansfield Secondary College’s Mt Buller Alpine campus. Students were able to use the latest in wearable and GPS technologies to track their performance whilst skiing and boarding during training sessions. Students collected a huge amount of data including; velocity, distance, heart rate, and altitude over a number of hours. They analysed these data sets from a mathematical and scientific perspective giving them insight into the analysis of athlete performance.

The research project focus for this tour was physics and friction. Students used force transducers, thermal cameras and range of tools to investigate the effect of wax on frictional forces. These investigations encouraged students to explore a number of different experiment methodologies and analysis methods.