If an ice skater is spinning will she spin faster if her arms are close to her body?

Question

and why?

Answer 1

yes. bc spiinning with arms down adds less tension to the body. making it easy to spin

  sources: Figure skater

Answer 2

YES!  She or he will go much faster.  Sorry, no clue why....probably gravity!

Answer 3

Yes.  Basic physics, the same mass (arms) will only move so fast with the same energy, if the arm is in close, it can travel over a greater distance, but must do more revolutions to do so.

Answer 4

it depends on how good her balance is.

she'll either go faster or land on her a r s e

Answer 5

yes, there will be less resistance and everything will be closed in and spin faster

Answer 6

Yes, she will spin faster.  IIRC, the governing principal is called angular momentum.

Answer 7

yes. Watch a video of fumie sugri's final spin on youtube. she pulls her freelegs and arms into one line with her body she spins much faster than she was spinning in the other positions.

Answer 8

The tighter you pull your arms and legs into your body while in a spin the faster you will go because of momentum.

Answer 9

yes because there isnt any resistence to the air around him or her.

Answer 10

Yes, the skater will go faster with her arms close to her body... ever heard of Centrifugal Force?

Answer 11

yes  she will it has to do with the moment of inertia. the closer your arms and legs are to the middle of the spin axis  the faster you will spin

Answer 12

yes. Simple as that, I'm not going to bore you with fancy physics mumbo-jumbo.

Answer 13

Yes.

It has to do with some fairly complex math and mid-to-high level physics.

Basically, with arms out, she is a bigger object, so the same force will spin her slower.  Pull the arms in, and she is smaller, so the force is more concentrated, so speed goes up.

That is a ridiculous oversimplification, but it's basically correct.

Answer 14

Indeed, conservation of momentum - just the way physics works in our galaxy.

Answer 15

She'll definitely spin faster. When your arms and legs are close tight to your body your not letting air through which slows you down. If you leave your arms and legs out away from your body more then there is more air that will slow you down. Hope i helped =]

Answer 16

Yes, yes she will. Mostly because the momentum is raised, less drag. She/he only slows down when they put their arms out, creating drag.

Answer 17

because it takes more energy to spin a person with their arms held out = greater mass (combination of weight and size).  if a skater generates X amount of centrifugal force, as she brings her arms closer to her body, her mass is reduced and that same amount of energy produces greater spin speed

Answer 18

yes, because its physics.

Answer 19

Yes, this has to do with the physics of skating.

Here are some links explaning it

http://clackhi.nclack.k12.or.us/Physics/...

http://home.honolulu.hawaii.edu/~leilani...

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/figu...

http://www.bsharp.org/physics/stuff/skat...

http://btc.montana.edu/olympics/physbio/...