#ICYMI: Physics on Wheels, with Dr. Skateboard & Othello Clark

Chuck Nice takes Gary O’Reilly for a ride down memory lane when he revisits his skateboarding youth with a couple of real pros: 2x US Master’s Champion Dr. Bill Robertson, aka Dr. Skateboard, and former skateboarding and snowboarding pro Othello Clark. Don’t miss an episode of Playing with Science. Subscribe to our channels on: TuneIn: tunein.com/playingwithscience Apple Podcasts: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/playing-with-science/id1198280360 GooglePlay Music: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/Iimke5bwpoh2nb25swchmw6kzjq SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/startalk_playing-with-science Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/startalk/playing-with-science NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/physics-on-wheels-with-dr-skateboard-and-othello-clark/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:10Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Knight.

• 0:12Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing with Science. Today, we go for the theatrical and tread the boards. Are you with me?

• 0:20Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I'm with you. So let's see if all the world is indeed a stage. Then, there may well be thrills and there well may be some spills. Are we there yet?

• 0:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely. The eagle has certainly landed. This show has been long overdue.

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:37Gary O'Reilly?

  We know skateboarding has always been something of a precarious balancing act.

• 0:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and for those who have ever cruised the asphalt or carved the park, this one's for you, baby. And for those of us who never have, well, it's for all of us, really.

• 0:52Gary O'Reilly?

  It is, and I'm in the latter of that. So, the first act belongs to a man who could be a hero straight off the pages of a DC comic. None other than Doctor Skateboard himself. AKA Bill Robertson, a former Masters freestyle champion and a PhD on wheels.

• 1:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and we're gonna bring a touch of Shakespearean class.

• 1:16Gary O'Reilly?

  I say.

• 1:17Chuck Nice?

  To the proceedings. Also, former professional skateboarder and snowboarder, a DJ no less, and a star of... Okay, wait for it.

• 1:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Hold the page.

• 1:27Chuck Nice?

  The bold and the beautiful Mr. Othello Clark will be with us.

• 1:31Gary O'Reilly?

  See, I never got on a skateboard. By the time skateboarding hit the UK, it's the early 80s, and I'm a professional soccer player.

• 1:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:38Gary O'Reilly?

  No motorcycles, definitely no skiing.

• 1:40Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 1:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Definitely no skateboard.

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 1:43Gary O'Reilly?

  So, I'm off the cliff here. I am into the unknown, but you...

• 1:46Chuck Nice?

  Your body was worth something back then.

• 1:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Eh.

• 1:50Chuck Nice?

  You know? My body, on the other hand, was completely worthless. And I threw caution to the wind quite a bit as a kid, and I was... You know, I was a skateboarder, I have to say. I was a skateboarder. I loved it. I lived in a neighbourhood where all the kids were discovering skateboarding at the same time, and we had a neighbour with a pool.

• 2:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Ooh.

• 2:11Chuck Nice?

  And the next evolution between flat-surface exercises, you know, where you learn to kick-flip and maybe do an ollie or tail-flip, or, you know, jump a curb or something like that, the next thing was, somebody said, "Yo, man..." There's these dudes in California, man, they skate in the pools. And we gotta learn how to drop in.

• 2:32Gary O'Reilly?

  That was it.

• 2:32Chuck Nice?

  And so a neighbor had a, I'll never forget, a kidney shaped pool that was three feet on one end and eight feet on the other. And you started off inside the pool and you would just learn how to actually go up the side of the pool. And then, I'll never forget, Rodney was the first kid to actually drop in successfully.

• 2:53Gary O'Reilly?

  What a hero.

• 2:54Chuck Nice?

  And everybody was like, yeah. I'll never forget that day, man. It was so cool. But enough about me, why don't we bring in our guest?

• 3:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Please.

• 3:02Chuck Nice?

  None other than Dr. Skateboard himself. Bill, how are you?

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Really good, Chuck. Thanks, Gary. And thank you both for having me on the show.

• 3:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Pleasure. First things first, Dr. Skateboard. Was that just, oh, it's gotta be Dr. Skateboard? Or was there a list? Were there options on the naming?

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I've been a skateboarder for over 40 years. I always had trouble remembering my name as Bill Robertson. So I started as that skateboard guy, but when I was going after my PhD, I remember telling a friend of mine, I'm gonna get my PhD. And he said, dude, I don't know anybody with a PhD. And he was one of my skateboarding friends. And so that's when I started thinking Dr. Skateboard. Dr. Skateboard also allowed me to be a little bit of a, you know, a dichotomy. So to put skateboarding with something in education was a motive as well.

• 3:56Chuck Nice?

  And I gotta tell you, man, that it's so important. I was just thinking how if there was somebody like you when I was a kid and we first started skateboarding, how much more excited about science all of us would have been, simply because skateboarding is one of the few activities where you can see physics at work, like physically, the outworking of physics at play.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  When I, when I started skateboarding like you, um Chuck, you know, it was, it was something fun to do. And then later on I competed as a pro, but then I was a middle school science teacher and was trying to get students interested in physics and they didn't care about the stuff I was doing in the classroom. Until one day I thought, you know, I could demonstrate forces, motion, Newton's laws of motion, simple machines with my skateboard. And I brought that in and started doing uh tricks and showing them the physics behind it. And that's when I really knew I had a way of engaging and motivating kids in education through skateboarding.

• 4:58Gary O'Reilly?

  And you call it edutainment.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:01Gary O'Reilly?

  And, and uh, that I think is just a wonderful term. And then there's another term that's been attached to you. Which just really energized me when I read it, action science. Now, I, I would learn science from a chalkboard. I had a chemistry teacher and I, I kid you not. White lab coat, bow tie, classic.

• 5:21Chuck Nice?

  Neil, I was your science teacher?

• 5:24Gary O'Reilly?

  No.

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 5:25Gary O'Reilly?

  His name is Mr. Neil and he wore a bow tie because he used to have a longer tie that was once made of acetate and he leant over a Bunsen burner. Hence, he had a bow tie from then on. Enough about my history.

• 5:37Chuck Nice?

  And then they called him Professor Burn Victim. I'm sorry.

• 5:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, but you bring it to life. So what's stale on a chalkboard is now animated and real. And some students learn through this tactile experience. They don't learn from reading things off of a chalkboard. It must be amazing for you.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Well, the, the thing we always tried to do within action science and the approach was to make it authentic. I mean, first it had to be good skateboarding. I've worked with BMX riders as well. And you know, we wanted it to be something that if people who are in the sport respected what was going on. Um, beyond that, we tried to embed a lot of content about the physics into mostly first live performances. And then video has been the big thing we've been working on now. And so, you know, we, we hook people by the action. But then we sustain it through the science and as Chuck and I were talking. Talking about earlier, you know, you also have the ability to to show people, you know,

• 6:37Speaker 02

  the physics they're doing and then break down, you know, what they've mastered in terms of the science as well. So a lot of times, you know, good skateboarders don't think about the the physics they've actually mastered. But when you help them to link it, learning those terms and learning those concepts actually might help them with with tricks. And so that motivation and engagement through skateboarding into their education is something that's central to what we've been trying to do.

• 7:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, you've got two of the worst pupils ever to sit in front of you.

• 7:06Chuck Nice?

  That's why we do this show. It's really just a veiled attempt for us to get

• 7:10Gary O'Reilly?

  It's a retrospective education.

• 7:12Chuck Nice?

  That's all.

• 7:13Gary O'Reilly?

  So drop some science on us. Give us some forces, motions, balance, Newton's third, whatever you got. Try and make us at least a D plus on our grade.

• 7:23Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah. And why don't we narrow that? Why don't we start with just balance? Because balance is the most important thing to to master first on a board. So with respect to balance, talk about it from the physics standpoint.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Sure. So when you're on a skateboard, one of the things you want to try to do is, you know, you want to be balanced, but you also, it's really about your center of gravity. So keeping your center of gravity over the middle of the board, or if you're in a manual or a wheelie, that you're, or, you know, a kick turn, you're up on the trucks. So the center of balance, being able to shift your center of balance over your board. And center of balance is also known as center of gravity or center of mass. So it's trying to keep that center of your body over the middle or the point of your board where you're turning. The other part within that is you're always really trying to manage balanced forces

• 8:17Speaker 02

  and unbalanced forces. Actually, when you're moving, you know, you're using unbalanced forces. So you're constantly trying to stay in balance, if you will, by keeping your center of gravity over the board. But you're also wanting the forces to be unbalanced so that you can keep moving. So that's a little bit of the dance you do on your skateboard. And in physics terms, though, I think the most important thing is to keep that center of gravity or that center of mass right over the middle of your board or a pivot point over your trucks.

• 8:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Doctor, professor, I'm not sure how I address you now.

• 8:50Gary O'Reilly?

  If for someone like me who never rode a skateboard more than one hundredth of a second, an ollie, I know the term, but it has got some amazing physics in it. And you've talked about center of gravity, but you're actually playing with the center of gravity of your own body, are you not? Can you explain or break that down for us?

• 9:09Speaker 02

  So the ollie, which is where you do basically a no-handed aerial, you go into flight and you you basically bang the tail or the back of your board on the ground and then you roll your ankle and jump forward. And this is, and then you level out your board and you fly through the air using it. And people who master that trick can, you know, go over things at great height or great distance. You know, it's a trick that was originated back in the 70s by a guy named Alan Gelfand and was perfected on the flat ground by a guy named Rodney Mullen. But it's a standard in skateboarding. The physics really is, it's all about flight. So you're, you know, you're trying to again, overcome

• 9:53Speaker 02

  gravity with lift and thrust with overcoming friction. But the other part of that is you do have to maneuver yourself and keep that center of gravity right over the middle of your board as you're as you're moving through this transition. The one thing you'll notice, like a lot of things that go in flight like that, is that a skateboarder actually rides a parabolic arc. So you'll see a skateboarder kind of ride an arc all the way across. They're not necessarily going straight up or straight down. They're going in this arc, this parabolic motion. And so riders that cover a lot of distance or can get really high and manage the speed can either go farther or go higher with this trick. But it's a it's a fundamental trick that's just like the basics of flight.

• 10:36Chuck Nice?

  Sweet. Man, this segment just flew by. I cannot believe this is like one of the fastest a segment has ever flown by. Ah, I see what you just did there. Ah, it's a segment with wheels.

• 10:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, before we go to a break, a lot of what you said, yes, physics, science, absolutely pure. But I sense an awful lot of intuition of every skater that comes into that. Are you able to portray that and bring that into the thinking of students?

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Well, one of the things we try when we're appealing to skateboarders is to tell them, you know, the things they're doing with their skateboarding, the things they've mastered are really high level thinking. They're problem solving, they're analyzing things, they're synthesizing information, they're evaluating and then they're being creative as a result of it, which is by definition higher order thinking. So we try to make a link from that to something they've mastered and say, you know, the things you do with your skateboard that have caused you to be really good, practicing, being tenacious, being persistent, setting goals, being creative, those are the same things you can apply to your education. And a lot of times it's just trying to tell people, hey, you know, if you're really good at something

• 11:49Speaker 02

  and you know what it's like to master something, whether it's a skateboard, a guitar, a second language, you can probably master something else. And so for me, a lot of times it's trying to just get them to link those habits of body, mind and spirit to something they love to do and then integrate it into their education. You know, that was true for me. I mean, I was not necessarily the greatest student when I started skateboarding, but skateboarding gave me experiences that took me a lot of different places. And then people encouraged me and said, hey, you're good at skateboarding. You could probably do pretty good in school. And I made that commitment myself. And really that's what I'm trying to do is reach out to people who might be marginalized because they're into a sport, but inherently they're

• 12:32Speaker 02

  the kinds of students you want to succeed because they are thinkers. Nice. That's fantastic.

• 12:39Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, we are going to take a commercial break. I don't want to lose the flow that we've got with the Dr. Skateboard. So we will come back. Thank you to Bill Robertson. We're going to take that break. The science we've looked at, the technology is on its way. Stick around.

• 12:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back, I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 12:59Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 12:59Gary O'Reilly?

  This is Playing with Science and we're exploring the science behind skateboarding. And joining us via video call is the man we had in part one, Dr Skateboard himself, Bill Roberts. I just need a really deep echoey voice then, but I just don't have it. We've covered the physics in part one, now let's take a look, a good look, at the tech, innovation and evolution of the board.

• 13:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes, well, let me tell you, so boards have come such a long way. Dr Skateboard and I were talking before the show about, you know, he and I are from the, pretty much the same era, where...

• 13:36Gary O'Reilly?

  90s.

• 13:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, yeah, well, late 80s, 90s, where, you know, I was telling you that I go so far back that I was skating before there were precision bearings. So, and one of the most traumatic things that could ever happen to you was, you just got these brand new polyurethane wheels, but the first polyurethane wheels that came out, they had regular bearings inside of them.

• 14:02Gary O'Reilly?

  They weren't sealed.

• 14:03Chuck Nice?

  They weren't sealed. And then you would pop a bearing, because you would like do a trick and you would land like slam down on the concrete and then your wheel didn't work. And you're like, what the, what just, and then you'd pick it up.

• 14:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Gosh.

• 14:16Chuck Nice?

  What the gosh just happened?

• 14:17Gary O'Reilly?

  There you go.

• 14:18Chuck Nice?

  What the what? And you would look inside your wheel and you would see there's a bearing.

• 14:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so...

• 14:23Chuck Nice?

  You popped a bearing.

• 14:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Let's get Dr Skateboard.

• 14:25Chuck Nice?

  Whole nother, whole nother world now.

• 14:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Just how much of a difference did this evolution in bearings make? Because we've got the polyurethane wheels, we know, we know a little bit and we'll revisit that, because I want to talk to you about transference of energy. But bearings, just lead us through bearings, if you would, please.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Right, so what Chuck is talking about with the bearings popping out, you know, was something that was common and was another way that, you know, you would just slam so gravity would overtake you, no matter what kind of wheel you were riding. The precision bearing or the, you know, that was in the wheel was a big deal because it not only allowed for those, the bearings to stop coming out, but it also allowed... You to maybe progress and push a lot harder.

• 15:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  You weren't just thinking about, oh, well, you know, I can't depend on my wheels. The other thing is, is that the bearings were encased. So they had, you know, they had lubricant in there. They lasted a lot longer. They, the dirt kept out of there. And those were some of the other things that really impeded what was going on that. And, and then they started to make different grades of bearings. So you had different types of bearings. That could be all the way, you know, from grade like one through seven, they call, you know, and then they also made them like Swiss bearings. So just like fine tune a watch or something like that, you had different versions of bearings. And so if you really wanted to go fast, you use the seal bearings and, and that's been a big progress in the sport.

• 15:52Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. And I'll never forget, um, oh man, I forget the kid. He had these, uh, they would, they, he was like, these are German precision bearings. Right? And they'd be like this, dude, they're German, so you know they're good.

• 16:09Gary O'Reilly?

  All right. We touched on the, the polyurethane construction of the wheel and that, that obviously changed everything for skateboarding. But in there, you've got degrees of softness.

• 16:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 16:21Gary O'Reilly?

  And, and from that, you can actually deform the wheel slightly so as you can get an extra pop with the energy. Is that correct?

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Well, so within urethane wheels, there's a hardness scale that's basically called durometer. And it's, uh, and it typically extends from maybe in the seventies up to a hundred plus. Really hard wheels are what you use, say in a skate park where you want to go fast. There's low friction on that. And then as you move down the scale of ninety, eighty, those become softer wheels. So they're grippier, you know, so they, they hold on to the, the ground a lot more. So the friction, if you will, that, that, uh, that part is increased. Uh, you tend to use softer wheels on slippery surfaces or if you're, you know, in very uneven surfaces.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  So for instance, you would use big soft wheels, maybe when you're using a cruiser board, you're riding around campus, you're riding on the boardwalk. And then you want to use really hard wheels uh when you really want to go fast in a park. And so um so the different durometers, the different sizes of wheels, the contact spaces on it and the hardness of the wheel definitely contribute to that. And so it's I think it's less about deforming the wheel as it is about, you know, managing the speed or the the friction, if you will, uh based on the the hardness or the softness of the wheel.

• 17:40Chuck Nice?

  And one of the things that happened like right after I started, you know, right after I got out of the out the look at me like I'm a professional boarder. I'm like, right, right after I retired, you know, when I retired from skateboarding, uh, you know, uh, got a job and joined the rat race, uh, but you saw wheels get like super tiny. You got these tiny little hard wheels and so.

• 18:06Gary O'Reilly?

  The diameter of the wheel then can changes the whole aspect.

• 18:09Chuck Nice?

  And those wheels were like the wheels that guys that were doing like super cool tricks. They were on using on these tiny wheels. So why did that development happen? Or what is the purpose of the tiny wheel is what I'm really asking? So the guys can do these great tricks.

• 18:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Remember they had small feet?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, the the the tiny wheel is one of the the primary things was so you have a smaller contact area. It's a smaller wheel, it's lighter. So in some ways what you're doing is you're decreasing the the contact edge of the wheel, but you're also decreasing the weight of the the board slightly. Um, so I think different smaller wheels were were an advent for people who are really trying to do progressions of flip tricks where they're really flipping things.

• 18:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Doing that as well. Um, there's also the uh, the the other part where people looked at the the ridiculously small wheels as just a a marketing ploy for for companies to sell more wheels, if you will. Um, but I think what you've seen now is the advent of more of a seventies concept where you have different wheels of different sizes used for different things. For instance, when I'm riding flat ground, I use a smaller wheel, about a fifty two millimeter wheel uh with a thirty eight millimeter contact patch. And then when I'm riding the park. I use a sixty millimeter wheel, uh, which is a much taller wheel. So I maintain my speed and keep my contact edge a lot more. So it depends on what you wanna do to, you know, you can vary your wheel.

• 19:36Chuck Nice?

  That's super cool. So let's talk, cause we're, I can't believe we're running out of time, man. It's just like, this is so cool. Okay. I feel like I'm thirteen again.

• 19:47Chuck Nice?

  Oh wait, I just gotta sit on my nose. Okay, anyway. Let's go back to the future. Yeah, so, uh, let's talk about, um, two things and I want you to relate them. So when you're dropping in a half pipe, okay, I want you to talk about the physics of when you drop in. It's like you allow gravity to take you down. You get to the bottom of the pipe and then you kinda like, I can't explain it because, uh, you know. But you kinda like push down on your board, like, you know what I mean? Like you drop your butt and you push down and then you take that. You drill down in and then you expect. Right, and then you kind of like come up off of it on the upside and that becomes like a pump. To get you back up to the other side, right? Lost a man.

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so I want you to talk about that and then talk about the difference between that, because you're on a surface. And a Back to the Future hoverboard. And what would the difference in skateboarding be between those two things on the surface, the way I just explained? And on a hoverboard, if you were on a electromagnetic. Or is that the worst thing Chuck could have ever said to you?

• 20:55Speaker 02

  That's an excellent question, you know, and I think, uh, I'll take a shot at it. You know, when you're, when you're dropping in on a half pipe or some kind of, uh, you know, steep angle like in a pool or something like that. The, the things that you're really dealing with first off is this idea of potential energy and kinetic energy. And so as you're at the top and you're stationary, you have all this, uh, potential energy. You drop in, you're on the face of the wall and that, that, that is also called mechanical energy. Those two sum together, kinetic and potential. And so as you're going down the, the wall, you're at some diminishing potential energy and increasing kinetic energy. When you hit the bottom at the transition, you're completely into kinetic energy. So your energy is at.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  It's highest when you're there and as Chuck was mentioning, that's a point where so you're going to use your legs to kind of manage to absorb that a little bit. And then you're going to, in a sense, throw yourself forward to propel that energy through the transition. So it's kind of like pumping the transition. Then as you come up to the other, so you gain speed there. And as you come up to the other side of the wall, you do almost the opposite. You're going to, you're going to move backwards, if you will, you're going to elongate yourself. You're going to go from full kinetic energy and then increase your potential energy as you move up to the top. So being able to manage that and stay in the bowl is a, is a big deal.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  And that's another reason why, you know, you use the trucks to grind or you go through the air, you know, by grabbing your board or ollieing to, to keep that, that momentum or that energy moving. So you're really moving between areas of, you know, high potential energy to full kinetic energy. And then managing the mechanical energy in between.

• 22:35Chuck Nice?

  Lexus, I don't know if you're familiar with this doc. You are familiar with it. Okay. So Lexus created a true electromagnetic hoverboard. Okay. And. Leather seats. Leather seats.

• 22:51Chuck Nice?

  But, but the cool thing about is, you know, you had to stay on their little track that they created. Okay. So let's say you had a whole half pipe that allows you to do that. What would this thing look like? What would skateboarding do? And, and is that the future of skateboarding?

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Well, you know, to me, it was one of the things I watched that, that video as well. And when I was watching the riders trying to, to learn how to do it, you just saw them slamming on the ramp over and over and over. Because first off, the, the way you move on that with, with less, so much less resistance requires so much less effort, if you will. And so, so a rider who's really good is usually used to like, you know, pushing really hard and, you know, grinding on the coping. And then this takes all that resistance, all that friction out of it. So you, I think, have to learn how to ride in a much more gentle way. To me, it, you know, it's like moving from. Skateboarding to snowboarding, you know, when you, you know, when I started snowboarding, people said, oh, you're going to be good at it because you're a skateboarder.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  You know, when I got on the hill, it was very different because you had to, you were just slipping and sliding the whole time, you know, when I got in the air, I could do all these skateboarding grabs. And then when I landed on the ground, it was like, you know, nothing I'd ever done before. It was very different because you're managing this increased, uh, you know, speed and lack of friction. And so how would that look in the future? You know, I think people could have fun with it. Um, you know, it'd be almost to me like a wave park for surfing. Um, but I don't know that it would displace the idea that, you know, and it's certainly the accessibility of the sport, the way it is, you know, living here, I see hundreds of kids out riding their skateboards and skateboards are affordable.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  I would imagine a hoverboard, uh, is going to be a little cost prohibitive, but you know, maybe in the future it will be something for everybody. But I think it would be ultimately easier than it is skateboarding, um, with urethane wheels. And I think people who ride urethane wheels like being in contact with the, the concrete with their wheels and managing that tension, if you will, um, all the time.

• 24:57Chuck Nice?

  Well, you just set us up for an awesome segue to our, our next segment because we actually, uh, you know, are going to be talking to a skateboarder turned snowboarder turned actor. So LA, so very LA.

• 25:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Doctor Skateboard just told us it's all about the big G.

• 25:16Chuck Nice?

  It's all about the big G, baby.

• 25:17Gary O'Reilly?

  G is what gives the real kicker to skateboarding. There's some science.

• 25:21Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 25:21Gary O'Reilly?

  All right. We'll take that break. We cannot go without saying so many thank yous to Doctor Skateboard, AKA Bill Robertson, who hasn't just unlocked the science, but he's given us the tech behind skateboarding. We are so privileged to have had him. Thank you so much, sir.

• 25:37Chuck Nice?

  You really have shown us that when you play with fire, you get burned. When you play with science, you get learned.

• 25:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Absolutely.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Thank you both so very much.

• 25:47Gary O'Reilly?

  You are welcome. Right. With those words of wisdom, we'll take that break. On the other side, Mr. Othello Clark, DJ, actor, snowboarder. Oh yeah, the bold and the beautiful. That's just Chuck and I. Stick around.

• 26:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And this is Playing with Science. Today, we have been talking the science and technology behind skateboards. And I think we're going to take it to a different direction and up a notch. Joining us to give us the pros perspective is Othello Clark. Yes, that Othello Clark, the bold and the beautiful athlete turned TV host, soap opera star. What haven't this, what hasn't this man done? It's amazing. He hasn't been on our show yet, but we're about to rectify that. We're going to rectify that right now. Welcome to the show. Othello, what's happening?

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Oh, great. How are you guys?

• 26:42Gary O'Reilly?

  How, how, how do you find yourself gravitating towards skateboarding?

• 26:47Speaker 03

  Skateboarding came first to me, first and foremost. My whole background comes from skateboarding. I grew up in Virginia Beach in Norfolk, Virginia area. And, and when we moved to this neighborhood, you know, parents always trying to get you in neighborhoods that they really can't afford, but they want you to have a better life. It was one of those stories with me. So we moved to this little neighborhood and everybody out front were these little white kids skateboarding. And, and I didn't have any friends, so I would just sit out there. And after I was sat there, finally a couple of days, a dude comes up to me and is like, would you like to skateboard? Would you like to try it? And next thing you know, I was having fun and the kids were starting to like me. So I knew that I had to be really good at skateboarding if I was going to get along in this neighborhood.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  So then from there, I decided to start practicing every day, all day. And I did get good and, and I knew that I had to be able to get good to be able to afford all the skateboards and all the equipment. So.

• 27:43Gary O'Reilly?

  All right. Motivation.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I knew my family wasn't going to buy me another skateboard every two or three weeks that we needed. So that I needed. So I knew the only way to get them for free was to become a sponsored skateboarder. So I practiced in the rain, day and night, every day after school till it got dark. Like, that's all I did. So then I finally got picked up and everything was great. I had a couple of sponsors.

• 28:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Let's take you back a couple of steps. That young man who fell in love with skateboarding, who then got very competitive and wanted to buy, you know, get himself boards, couldn't afford to buy them himself. How much of the science involved in skateboarding did you have consciously in your mind? And then bring to the development of new tricks?

• 28:27Speaker 03

  Well, you know, it's tricks, it's not development of new tricks. You're on a next level when you start developing your own tricks. What it is, is mastering the tricks that are already out there. And then mastering the tricks that, that are a one and five chance of landing the trick every time. So you work on those tricks and you master them to the point where you can get them on command. It's not, i- i- in our sport, it's not about if you can do the trick or not, because everybody can do the trick. It's about whether or not you can do it when the time comes.

• 29:00Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And were you, were you cognizant of any of the physics involved? And we just had, uh, uh, Dr. Bill Robinson, Dr. Skateboard on. And, uh, he, he was, we were talking about the physics of many of the moves in skateboarding, which of course translates, uh, not seamlessly, but does translate to snowboarding. Were you aware, either skateboarding or snowboarding, of any of the physics and the science involved in what you were doing?

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Uh, well, I mean, that, that kind of, that, that, let me answer that, let me think about this. I was aware of it in a sense that I knew what the board had to do. Because when I learn tricks, what I do is I, I sit down and I stare at how it works and what it takes to make it happen. So, for instance, a kickflip, you know, I knew that you had to ollie first and get to your highest point. And then I know you had to take your foot and then flip it really quick. And then the board flip and then you land. So I would watch that for a while and then I would study where it was to, at the proper time, I need to flip the board to land it.

• 30:08Speaker 03

  Or I would, so once that you got that down, then you understood the next thing is to get your footing right. So now I know how to flip the board, now I need to figure out where my feet were gonna be when I landed on the board. Uh, when the board was coming down and I was about to land away. So then the next step into learning that trick was flipping done. Now landing and even if the board didn't land, making your feet land in a way that when the board finally does get to you, you were ready for it. So then that was the next step. And then you put them together and that's how I always learned tricks was in steps.

• 30:42Gary O'Reilly?

  So that's the appliance of science.

• 30:43Chuck Nice?

  And that is the application of science. I mean, absolutely. That is critical thinking, uh, married to trial and error and, uh, um, until you get, uh, the desired outcome. So, yeah.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  Exactly. A lot of trial and error, a lot, a lot of trial and error, you know? You're not supposed to skateboard in the rain or, or water, but I mean, that didn't stop me. I just changed my wheels and I was out there non-stop in the rain, trial and error, learning new tricks every day.

• 31:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you still skateboard?

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Every day.

• 31:14Gary O'Reilly?

  You still get the time, but it's still in your blood. You still have to have that, that piece of you on a board.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  My whole life is skateboarding, man. Um, I.

• 31:24Gary O'Reilly?

  That's fantastic.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  If it's not skateboarding, I'm right, I'm across the street from the skate park. So I stare at it and, and I watch it.

• 31:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, good. See that, that's where I'm a Viking, staring at it.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:36Chuck Nice?

  I am awesome at that.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  I, I enjoy, I enjoy watching kids learn new tricks because I remember when I was learning that trick and I think to myself, okay, he's about to do it. Three more tricks, three more tries. He's not bringing it. And then he lands it and it's almost as if I learned to do it again by watching. So, yeah, I'm always around the skate park.

• 31:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Do you still get the same buzz now that you had when you were sat on the porch watching the other kids and then getting involved?

• 32:06Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, that's a great question. I do, but it's from like unbelievable tricks that are coming of age these days.

• 32:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  You know, I, I'll be scrolling through Instagram or something, you know, and on my feed there's all skateboards and I'm like, huh huh. And then I'll see a trick that just makes me go wow and put my phone down like, oh my gosh, skateboarding is on a next level right now.

• 32:30Chuck Nice?

  It really is.

• 32:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  Brilliant. So when I was skateboarding back in the day, man, so you know, it went from flat surface tricks like, you know, you were just learning how to, you know, kickflip, you're trying to ollie, you know, and then, you know, we, we had a neighbor who had a pool, so we started dropping in, you know, I didn't. I'm gonna be very honest, full disclosure, full disclosure, I did skate the pool, I skated the bowl, I skated the bowl, I never dropped in, I'm gonna be honest. I'm gonna be honest, cuz I don't wanna sit here and be a poser, okay, but, and

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Best policy.

• 33:01Chuck Nice?

  And, but then you look and you see the progression from that, back when I was a kid, to like the X Games today. And where do you think this is going, man? I mean, it's, and what you just said about you look at Instagram now, where do you see this going? It's, it's really insane.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  Well, you know, again, another great question, I don't, I, I can't tell you where it's going because I just can't imagine, which is silly for me to say, but I just can't imagine the tricks getting more technical than they already are, you know, I see some of the craziest tricks that just straight blow my mind every day and I go, wow, what else? Uh, I think that what, what the next progression of this sport is to have every trick that's being done now, done bigger.

• 33:52Chuck Nice?

  Right, okay.

• 33:53Speaker 03

  Done at a different level. So you see the half pipe behind you, the next trick will be done at a 10 foot half pipe in the woods, you know, floating on a barge. They, they try to take things in skateboarding to artistic level nowadays, you know what I mean?

• 34:09Chuck Nice?

  I got you.

• 34:10Speaker 03

  There's a, there's a skater, everybody should look up, called Daywon Sung.

• 34:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  And Daywon Sung is probably, is probably, he, he's an old school skater, but he had to redefine or rebuild himself to continue to remain current. And so now his videos and all the stuff that he does, he adds all the hottest tricks in with the little like magic, like he'll, he'll, he'll ollie a trash can and then do a spin on the lid and then down. You know what I mean?

• 34:42Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 34:43Speaker 03

  So, or

• 34:44Chuck Nice?

  So he's taking it to Vegas? Yeah, that's very cool, man.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 34:47Chuck Nice?

  He's taking it to Vegas, that's a great way to say it, that's a great way to say it. Hey, let me ask, let me ask you this, Othello, so speaking of tricks, what's your favorite trick? Either that you do or that you've seen somebody do?

• 34:59Speaker 03

  Oh, man. I don't know, you know, I'm more, I'm not a technical, I'm, I'm more on a fast, smooth, pretty side than I am a technical side. I got you. I like, I like to go around really fast and grind and do little airs and come around and do another trick and right. Rather than do one trick and that trick be the most technical aboard flying around. I like it to just be smooth. I might do, a kid might do a backside three sixty over the table, a backside five forty over the table on his skateboard and land, but he barely made it, but he landed, it was cool. But then I'll come and do like this slow three sixty that just glides and then it's smooth.

• 35:41Speaker 03

  So it's not more of the technical tricks I like. I like the more smoothest aspects of being able to land tricks. I got you, yeah. I like to flow like water. Right, yeah. Exactly. I like to flow like water. Alright.

• 35:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Ah, well, Thelo, been a pleasure, sir.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  Hey, guys. Thank you so much. Have a great afternoon.

• 35:59Gary O'Reilly?

  We will do.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  Off to the skate park for me.

• 36:01Chuck Nice?

  There you go, my friend. Dude, this was a great show. What a great show.

• 36:04Gary O'Reilly?

  I mean, we, we, we've been trying to get a show like this put together for some time. I'm so pleased we did. Doctor Skateboard, I love that name. I'm probably just gonna dub, I'm just gonna use it for the rest of the day for myself.

• 36:16Chuck Nice?

  Go Robertson, Doctor Skateboard.

• 36:17Gary O'Reilly?

  But what, the way he uses the whole skateboard thing to bring science forward and, and, and just bring it alive.

• 36:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Gary O'Reilly?

  What, what, to, to think, and you're thinking, can, can other sports do that? Can they bring science forward and, and take the staleness out of it that sometimes can come from a classroom?

• 36:38Chuck Nice?

  I, I hope they can because, uh, if they don't, we're gonna be out of a job. No, I'm joking.

• 36:45Chuck Nice?

  No matter what, we'll always be here because it's sports and science. It's the, it's the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of, uh, uh, sports and science. You got sports and my science.

• 36:56Gary O'Reilly?

  I got deliciousness.

• 36:59Gary O'Reilly?

  That's ruined that one, hasn't it?

• 37:02Gary O'Reilly?

  But go back to Othello, right?

• 37:05Gary O'Reilly?

  His sport has taken him.

• 37:08Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 37:08Gary O'Reilly?

  To a whole new direction. But what he learnt from being that kid, not having any friends, to being this really competitive, dedicated skateboarder, has put him into an unbelievable scenario. So it can, you know, sport can take you to different sorts of places. But if you understand the science in there, it can really max out what you get from your sport.

• 37:29Chuck Nice?

  And you know, the funny thing is, my son has been begging me for a skateboard for about a year now. And since I finally got insurance, I might just get it for him.

• 37:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Does the neighbour have a pool?

• 37:41Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, that's it for today's show. I hope you've enjoyed our little skateboarding adventure as much as Chuck and I. It's been Playing with Science. We'll see you all soon.