English

Skateboard Tricks and Topological Flips

Mathematical Physics 2021-08-16 v1 Differential Geometry math.MP

Abstract

We study the motion of skateboard flip tricks by modeling them as continuous curves in the group SO(3)SO(3) of special orthogonal matrices. We show that up to continuous deformation there are only four flip tricks. The proof relies on an analysis of the lift of such curves to the unit 3-sphere. We also derive explicit formulas for a number of tricks and continuous deformations between them.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2108.06307,
  title  = {Skateboard Tricks and Topological Flips},
  author = {Justus Carlisle and Kyle Hammer and Robert Hingtgen and Gabriel Martins},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.06307},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

20 pages, 12 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-24T05:06:04.293Z