Ski Moguls Move Uphill

[snafu]

Bet you didn't know that. Neither did I. Just goes to show you

http://academic.regis.edu/dbahr/GeneralPages/Research/MogulResearch.htm

:-o

 

[WJenness]

cool link. thanks for sharing... but now I'm going to be analyzing that every time I look at a bump field.

-w

 

[bvibert]

I saw that a few years ago somewhere. Pretty interesting stuff.

 

[Highway Star]

This explains A-zone. Finally.

And moguls act like a computer.

Say what?!

Yup, those fields of moguls act just like your desktop computer. Seriously. They can do anything your desktop can do. Think of the moving moguls as electrons. The ski trail is like a wire. As multiple "wires" come together, the moguls interact and perform calculations (technically, the junctions of ski trails act as "logic gates" just like the wires, transistors, and chips in your Mac, Gateway, or Dell PC). Of course, moguls don't come with keyboards and monitors, but the input (keyboard) and output (monitor) are written in a kind of "bump Braille". Each mogul is a raised "dot" in the Braille -- just run your hands (or skis) over the bumps to see what the moguls are calculating.

There's a technical math proof that the moguls behave as a computer. This will be submitted as a scientific paper shortly. Stay tuned for more on mogul computers!

Oh, and next time you need a day off from work, go skiing and tell your boss "I'll be spending the day on the computer."

 

[Mapnut]

That's a well-written and entertaining site. I started out skeptical; I was going to post that the uphill motion is an illusion caused by the tree shadows moving uphill, or that you could select the frequency of the photos to make the moguls move in any direction, like film of wheels that appear to rotate backwards. But after a while I could track individual moguls. Besides, Bahr's logic that skiers scrape snow from the downhill side of a mogul onto the top of the mogul below seems irrefutable.

 

[snowmonster]

I saw that a few years ago somewhere. Pretty interesting stuff.

There was an article on this in Ski about 2 years ago.

 

[mondeo]

It's a fallacy. The mogul is the collection of snow at a given time. Some of that snow is getting pushed towards the front of the next bump. That doesn't mean the next bump is moving uphill, it means the mogul is getting moved downhill piece by piece. Particle traces would go downhill.

Still interesting, though.

 

[Mapnut]

It's a fallacy.

It's not, as the website explains. Yes, the snow particles move downhill, but the mogul moves uphill, being made of different snow at different times. It's a wave phenomenon. Ocean waves move through the water, but the water stays where it is, the particles moving in an ellipse. That doesn't mean the wave isn't a real thing, it just isn't a specific mass.

Obviously, I don't have enough to do at work.

 

[tarponhead]

It's a fallacy. The mogul is the collection of snow at a given time. Some of that snow is getting pushed towards the front of the next bump. That doesn't mean the next bump is moving uphill, it means the mogul is getting moved downhill piece by piece. Particle traces would go downhill.

Still interesting, though.

Symantics. But a good observation however. It depends what you define as a mogul. Per the authors definition, he/she is correct.

If you define it as you stated, then you arfe correct as well.

Agreed, very interesting.

 

[ta&idaho]

Really interesting read, although the idea that "bumps are self-organizing" sounds blasphemous to the seeded bump devotees. :wink:

 

[bvibert]

There was an article on this in Ski about 2 years ago.

That's definitely not where I saw it. I saw the above website before, I think it was linked to from a thread at epicski.