3264: 720 Ollie

2026-06-27T02:48:53Z

2603:8083:F9F0:45F0:D092:6503:917C:88B7: Moved transcript to it's correct location.

{{comic
| number = 3264
| date = June 26, 2026
| title = 720 Ollie
| image = 720_ollie_2x.png
| imagesize = 257x325px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = This discovery was key to his demonstration of regular/goofy symmetry violation, which won him gold in the theory portion of the X Games.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created recently. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

Tony Hawk tells Cueball that doing a single 360-degree spin causes him to land backward rather than forward. This is unexpected, since a 360-degree turn in the xy plane is a full revolution, meaning that it should return Tony Hawk to his original position. He further claims that doing a 720-degree spin causes him to land forward, which seems to imply that revolving 360*n degrees causes him to reverse orientation n times (so if n is even, then he returns to the same orientation, and if n is odd, he lands with the opposite orientation).

The caption reveals that this is because Tony Hawk is a spin-½ fermion. This explains the paradox, but is unusual because spin-½ particles are normally very small, only occurring in quantum physics rather than Newtonian physics. Since Tony Hawk is not a subatomic particle [citation needed], it is unclear how his skateboard tricks could be described only by quantum physics.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
:Tony Hawk [holding a skateboard]: Something weird I've noticed is that if I do a 360 ollie, I land backward. I have to do a 720 to land going forward.

:[An illustration, above the heads of Tony Hawk and Cueball, depicts Tony Hawk doing two 360-degree turns on a skateboard]

:Caption: Tony Hawk discovers that he's a spin-½ fermion.

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

3264: 720 Ollie