Street Hockey

Street hockey is different from the other forms of hockey in that it is played on the street (or in a parking lot) with either rollerblades or rollerskates, very little equipment, and a ball instead of a puck.

Street hockey balls are lighter than pucks, and tend to have more air resistance. Because of this fact, the balls go slower, and their parabolic path of travel can become quite evident. If a ball is shot, its path of travel looks like this:

In the absence of gravity, the ball would travel in a straight line, forever (Newton’s first law). However, because of the downward gravitational force acting on the ball, it is pulled away from the straight line, and follows a parabola.

Aside from Newton’s three basic laws of motion and forces, there are some other facts about forces that are very relevant to street hockey. Consider a beginning rollerblader that just crashed on the pavement pretty hard and is no longer moving. As stated by Newton’s second law of motion, the net force is zero because the body is not accelerating. However, there are still forces acting on him. The support force, or normal force, is acting perpindicular to the surface, friction is pulling back on the skater (which is the reason why he’s not moving), and gravity is of course pulling down. But again, the total (net) force is zero because force is a vector quantity, and they all cancel each other out.

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