It’s not every day that science students get to suit up in their ski and snowboard gear and hit the slopes to study physics.

But not every class is located in Jasper National Park (JNP) with a Parks Canada education program that has a credited high school courses, a ski hill willing to share their space and show them first hand ways they can put their lessons to work in the real world.

That is what the Jasper Secondary School’s Physics 20 class was doing last Friday (Jan. 8), as a joint effort from the Grand Yellowhead Public School Division, Marmot Basin and the Palisades program at JNP.

About a dozen students were on the hill getting a chance to put into context what they have been learning in the classroom, an idea spearheaded by teacher Geoff Fraser and supported by the Palisades stewardship education and program lead James Bartram.

“In physics, we do a lot of stuff with motion. How things move, why things move, the energy that’s involved,” Fraser said.

What if friction didn’t exist? How fast could you be going at the bottom of the slope? What is the velocity of the Eagle Ridge Chair?

These are all questions that Fraser had his students figure out during their day on the ski hill. With the help of professional tools such as GPS units provided by Bartram, the students were treated like professionals, given professional equipment, and given real-life scenarios.

As Bartram explained, it’s easy to teach from a textbook, but students are savvy and get bored easily, so it’s important to continually improve your program and seek new ideas.

“You do have to make the connection with them. If you can see their eyes glazing over during you’re little textbook lesson, then it’s time to get out of the classroom and do something with them,” added Fraser.

While the students had a job to do while they got to enjoy some skiing and snowboarding, they were also given a presentation by Marmot Basin’s director of patrol Jeff Andrews, who showed them how physics comes into play in his job.

Bartram said that right now, many people believe the knowledge expected of a high school student is comparable to a PhD graduate of the 1920’s or 1930’s.

“So we’ve got huge academic inflation, the expectations and knowledge base, everything’s increasing. Our challenge as educators is how do you make those kind of real tangible connections? How do you put the learning in context?”

That’s where Andrews comes into play.

“If you bring them out here they see a guy like Jeff Andrews talking about avalanches and he’s using his science education to estimate the mass of snow and density of snow, and that’s what he does as a job. It allows them to see that, (and think) wow, I could use what I’m learning in the classroom, for maybe not the same thing (but something similar), but it’s using the same skill set and the knowledge base.”

Not only did Andrews show the students how they can use what they are learning in the classroom and apply it to real life work, he also had some pretty good advice about avalanches.

“When you put it in the context of how these kids got it today – you can wave your finger and say to kids, don’t ski out of bounds, don’t ski out of bounds – he actually gave some solid reasons why not too. There might be a live bomb that’s ready to go off, like you never know what’s going on behind that sign. It’s really in your best interest to not go beyond that sign.”

Bartram said The Science on the Hill was a success, and that it would likely happen again next year, and if things go well, it could spread to other schools across the province.