Our most recent lessons on friction gave me a better understanding of an experience my friends and I had with water slides. The last Sunday before school started, me and a couple of friends took some boogie boards and surfed down a tarp ramp. One of my friends tried to slide down with out a board and before we added water. The coefficient of friction between his skin and the tarp was high, making it hard for him to move. To decrease the coefficient of water we got a bucket of soap water and poured it down the ramp creating a slick path. I was able to slide down easily because the coefficient of friction between my board and the water was pretty low. I started at rest, and my friend's push overcame the static friction force accelerating me down the tarp.
Physics has really improved my view on daily activities. To most its common sense that water will make us go faster but we never question why. I don't have enough information to actually solve for my friends force, friction, or acceleration, but if given some values (perhaps the angle of the ramp) you could go about solving for different variables using the following equations found from interpreting a Free Body Diagram of the scenario.
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