Impromptu physics!

The other day we happened upon physics quite by accident.

I love it when that happens.

We took our boys to the local skate park because they are interested in skate boarding at the moment (I do love to encourage them to explore and try new things).  

This particular skate park happened to have a bowl which was new to the boys so they got to work trying to ride up and down the sides of the empty pool (or that's what it looks like to me).  Josh trained the boys to stay low on their boards and keep themselves centered with the ground no matter what angle they are riding on.  We told them it helped to stay low and centered because they are then taking advantage of their center of gravity.

And that's where physics popped in.  Suddenly they wanted to know what in the world center of gravity was.

Well, I couldn't pass up an opportunity like that, so after a simple explanation of the concept we decided to put it into action with a little experiment.  Here's what happened.