The Physics of Horseback Riding

    Over Thanksgiving break, I competed in a horse show at Skidmore College. As I was watching the jumping classes, waiting for mine to begin, I was thinking about how horses are able to jump over things. It quickly occurred to me that physics is involved. Kinematics, forces, and energy are all key components of the horse being able to jump.

    The motion of a horse going over a jump reminded me of the projectile motion problems we looked at in class, specifically, the springbok jumping problem. The horse leaves from the ground, which could be considered y = 0m, and reaches the highest point of the jump before returning to the ground. There is motion in both the x and y directions. This motion could be analyzed using kinematics.

    Forces can also be analyzed. To get over the jump, a horse requires a change in motion caused by a force, in this case a push off the ground. The horse exerts a force on the ground as the animal takes off, while the ground exerts a force back on the horse, thus allowing the horse to jump. The horse uses this momentum to accelerate and push itself over the jump, which is the direction of the net force acting on the horse, Newton’s Second Law of motion.

    Lastly, energy can be used to analyze the motion of a horse jumping because energy is connected to motion and the ability to cause motion. As the horse moves towards the jump, it has kinetic energy defined as KE = ½mv2. As the horse jumps, most of that energy becomes potential energy, defined as PE = mgh, because the horse itself is not actually moving, it is simply flying through the air. Once the horse lands again, the energy transforms back into kinetic energy. Although I am not positive what the forces would be, I am sure that there are also non-conservative forces acting on the system, perhaps air resistance, friction, or even the force of the push off the ground. The equation that could be used to analyze this is △KE = -△PE + Wnc.

There are just some of the ways that I could think of in which horseback riding is related to physics, but I am sure there are many other ways in which the two are related!