Analyse the motion of projectiles by resolving the motion into horizontal and vertical components
- Projectile: Any object launched into the air.
- Trajectory: The path that a projectile follows during its flight.
- In the absence of air resistance, a projectile will trace out the shape of a parabola (below left), although the Earth’s atmosphere causes this shape to be slightly deformed (below right):
- The motion of a projectile can be regarded as two separate and independent motions (horizontal and vertical)
- The two components (horizontal and vertical) together combine to form the projectile motion in 2 dimensions
- Because the two motions are perpendicular, and hence independent, they can be treated and analysed separately.
- The vertical motion of a projectile is accelerated directly down due to gravity at approximately 9.8 ms-2. Thus, it will rise up (due to its vertical component of initial velocity), slow to a halt in the air, and then fall back down to Earth.
- In terms of horizontal motion, a projectile does not undergo acceleration, and thus travels with a uniform velocity (ignoring air resistance).
- It is the combination of uniform vertical downward acceleration and uniform horizontal velocity that produces the parabolic shape of a projectile’s path of motion.
Extract from Physics Stage 6 Syllabus © 2017 NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA)