Projectile motion

Value of g, the gravitational acceleration, in m/s/s
Value of vx, the horizontal velocity, in m/s
Initial value of vy, the vertical velocity, in m/s

The simulation shows a ball experiencing projectile motion.
Use the buttons to select different values of g (the acceleration due to gravity), the horizontal component of the initial velocity, and the vertical component of the initial velocity.


A motion diagram is drawn, with images of the ball being placed on the diagram at 1-second intervals.
The numbers have been chosen so the motion diagram is always symmetric (the images of the ball on the y-axis on the way up are always the same locations as the images of the ball on the way down), and the time for the entire trip is always an integer number of seconds. (It should be obvious that this will not always happen in reality!)

The arrows attached to the ball are the horizontal and vertical components of the velocity.

Simulation first posted on 8-03-2016. Written by Andrew Duffy

Creative Commons License
This work by Andrew Duffy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This simulation can be found in the collection at http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/classroom.html.

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