surfing!

Last weekend, I went to the beach with my cousins JR and Nick. We went to Ali'i beach in the North Shore and we swam and ate huli huli chicken. There was the big surf tournament there but that day it was canceled so we didn't get to watch it. But there were many people out in the water surfing. I thought that there has to be physics involved in this.
From Newton's 1st law we know that things always wants to keep on doing what it's already doing. This means that the wave will want to keep on moving and if a surfer is just sitting on a board, the board will just want to keep on staying still. When you see people surf, they have to paddle in order to catch the wave. This is because they have to match the speed in order to catch it. But for the big waves that are moving very fast, it is impossible for a surfer to match the speed of the wave just by paddling. So lucky for those big wave surfers, there is concervation of energy, which means Potential Energy can be converted into Kinetic Energy. "Dropping in" does just that. A surfer has to paddle (or sometimes, with the big waves, get towed in) in order to gain some speed so the wave doesn't pass right under them. This initial speed halps the board and the surfer to fall down the face of the wave or "drop in". The Potential Energy they had at the top of the wave is now converted into Kinetic energy as they go down it.
( KE top + PE top = KE bottom)

This gives a surfer the speed needed to match the wave's and catch it. There is physics in something as simple and as fun as surfing.