I always think of this as a simple topic. However, my students always find it hard, especially the formulae.
The first place to start when thinking about this topic is the hill near to the village (Brockworth) where I grew up where they still do Cheese Rolling every year…
Even my primary school teacher wrote a book on the topic Jean Jefferies. (However, it is not focused on the Physics!)
So now you have the idea think about a man who lifts a cheese and himself up to the top of a hill. His muscles have to do work as he is moving himself and a cheese to a point further away from the surface of the Earth. This is because the man and cheese are in the influence of a “gravitational field” which causes anything with mass to feel weight or acceleration towards the centre of the object.
So the formulae we employ to work out the work done in climbing the hill is the change in height x distance moved against the field x mass.
We often write this as…
Ep = mgh or sometimes as mgΔh to show “a change in height”.
So where has the energy come from…. well simple the muscles in the body of the man have contracted and converted chemical energy to movement energy to push the man away from the field.
So what happens to the energy as you release the cheese? Well we think of another idea of “kinetic energy”. As you roll down the hill and gain in velocity you exchange your gained Ep to Ek so then most of the energy is coverted according to the rule ½ mv2 .
Often we write that mgΔh = ½ mv2so if it was a 100% transfer we could work out the maximum velocity of a cheese falling down the hill!
Pagan History
A world-famous phenomenon, Gloucestershire’s annual Cheese Rolling event attracts thousands of spectators and brave competitors from all over the world to Cooper’s Hill in Brockworth, who are determined to keep this wacky tradition alive.
Whether you dare to chase the cheese or want to watch safely from the sidelines, discover exactly what Cheese Rolling is and when you can catch the action in 2025.
A long-standing tradition, the Gloucestershire Cheese Rolling is a race like no other, where participants throw themselves down Cooper’s Hill after a wheel of Double Gloucester cheese.
The 180-metre hill is so steep (with a 1:2 gradient, it’s the steepest slope in Gloucestershire, in fact!) that very few contestants manage to stay on their feet and end up tumbling down the hill in a desperate attempt to catch the coveted dairy prize.
While the cheese can never actually be caught — with a brief head start, it soon reaches breakneck speeds of up to 80mph! — the Cheese Rolling winner is the first person to cross the line at the bottom of the hill.
The Cheese Rolling festival at Cooper’s Hill in Brockworth, England, is a unique tradition with potential pagan origins. While the exact origins are debated, it began hundreds of years ago as an opening point to the summer. It also has had morris dancing and maypoles at the top of the hill.
The children run up the hill for one race and sweets are thrown down, but the climb is actually quite treacherous.
The historical winners board can be found here… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper’s_Hill_Cheese-Rolling_and_Wake
2025 Race Schedule 12 to 1.30pm BST
- 1st men’s downhill competition.
- under-11s uphill
- 2nd men’s downhill going third
- over-12s uphill
- women’s downhill,
- adult mixed uphill
- 3rd men’s downhill
What is amazing is now that it has become an international event there is so much news coverage of the day that locals now struggle to even get a look in. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/25/sport/cheese-rolling-coopers-hill-england-spt-intl
A final point, if you have never visited, imagine the most tiny road that you could ever drive up, and then imagine you have a broken leg, arm, or back and how the ambulance is even going to get you out. Do that before you throw yourself down the incredible steep hill.
