Projectile motion

Chapter 2. Projectiles

Supporting pages (HTML pages with embedded animations)

Background material for projectiles
Gravity and air resistance act on projectiles. Compare experiments on earth and the moon. A simple experiment to measure g. The independence of vertical and horizontal motion. Trajectories. Launch angle and range. Examples.

Graphs, errors, dimensions and units
Drawing graphs, handling units and errors, significant figures, the method of dimensions, dealing with non-SI units

The monkey and the hunter
An old puzzle about the independence of vertical and horizontal motion: we compare an object falling vertically with a projectile fired horizontally. No monkeys were hurt in the making of this web site.

Download all animations in this chapter (or individually below each thumbnail)

Projectiles