Thousands of the world’s best athletes will flock to Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy in February 2026 for the 25th Winter Olympics. While sports fans are focused on the athletic feats of the Olympians, science enthusiasts can also have fun watching them.

Lots of winter sports are governed by unique laws of physics – from skaters speeding across the ice to skiers and snowboarders seemingly floating through the air. The artificial snow that athletes ski or board over is an engineering feat. The Winter Olympics even have math: Mathematicians have found that luck plays a larger role in hockey games than in other sports, such as baseball, basketball and football.

To help our readers follow both the sports and the science while watching the Games this year, The Conversation U.S. has compiled a set of stories from our archive.

Olympic ski jumping is not for the faint of heart. Athletes plummet down a jump about 300 feet (100 meters) tall, before taking off into the air. They then can fly more than the length of a football field before touching down.

As physicist Amy Pope wrote in her article, three key physics concepts allow them to float through the air: gravity, lift and drag.

The regulations around the sport reinforce these ideas. Athletes must wear form-fitting suits to ensure they’re not getting even a little extra lift from any loose or flapping cloth. The skis athletes use must have a length proportional to their height and weight, as well.

“By turning their skis and bodies into what is essentially a wing, ski jumpers are able to fight gravity and stay airborne for five to seven........

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