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  • Vertical properties of projectile motion.
Topics:  Projectile motion, ballistic motion, velocity, acceleration, constant acceleration, gravity, freely falling body.

Pre-requisite skills:  An understanding of the kinematic equations of motion for constant acceleration.

Approximate completion time:  Under an hour.

Provide sufficient detail to verify that the assignment was completed in a meaningful manner.

Applet by Angel Franco Garcia
1.  Set inital vertical position (Posicion) of the projectile to 0.   Press the Start (Empiaza) button.   On the left side of the applet appears a black dot, representing the vertical position of the projectile.  Essentially, this black dot would simulate the shadow of the projectile on a vertical screen if a long fluorescent light tube was shining horizontally.  (See Fig. 1.)   Also appearing are two vectors, representing the vertical velocity and acceleration vectors.    Describe what happens to the length and direction of each vector as the projectile travels.

fluor1.jpg (9258 bytes)

Figure 1


2. Is the red vector, representing the vertical acceleration, ever 0, even at the top of the flight?   Explain why or why not.


3.   If the "shadow" of the projectile had been projected instead onto the floor (see Fig. 2), what would be its motion?

fluor2.jpg (8230 bytes)

Figure 2

Helpful Resources

  1. Vectors and Motion by Tom Henderson.
  2. The Physics Hypertextbook by Glenn Elert (see Mechanics)
  3. Physics E-Book - Projectile Motion by Fred Gram (formerly, Zogrseb, of the planet Ktoobirzp).
  4. Book of Phyz - Motion by Dean Baird

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