Good Sites for Projectile Motion Explanation

Submitted by bogusia on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 20:37.
Type: 
Stories
Keywords: 
projectile motion

Next class I'll be teaching about projectile motion. Here are some good flash/media simulations off the web to explain that the horizontal and vertical motions are independent.

Parabolic Motion of Projectiles

Dropping two balls

Projectile Motion 1

Projectile Motion 2

Problems with Projectile Motion 1 link

Submitted by mara dobrov (not verified) on Tue, 04/13/2010 - 03:37.

Ouch!
Although the gunshot oriented horizontally (90degrees) or at any angle going up coordinates correctly with the simultaneously dropped ball on the y axis, pointing the gun at some angle towards the ground does not match a dropped ball from the same point! The simulation implies a synchronous landing and this is not the case. Shoot a gun down at your feet and you've added not only a constant acceleration that increases with greater height (i.e. time to fall/accelerate), but also an intial intial Vy which adds to the resultant speed.
These links (Proj 1, 2 two balls in motion) are great until you look at this one closer. I'll ask my kids (10th,11th grade Integrated science) to tell me "what's wrong with this picture?"...In that respect maybe the mistake in design will still demonstrate the 'power of failure' and give us the proverbial 'aha'.

I don't think the Projectile

Submitted by bogusia on Tue, 04/13/2010 - 04:15.

I don't think the Projectile Motion 1 link implies the synchronous landing. It just shows the different types of possible projectiles: shooting horizontally, at an angle up, at an angle down. The other links show more of the component similarity of horizontal projectile to a vertical drop.

Thanks for the comment and for the detailed analysis!

Eduction online

Submitted by Kate (not verified) on Mon, 12/08/2008 - 16:11.

I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Kate

http://educationonline-101.com

Thanks!

Submitted by bogusia on Wed, 12/10/2008 - 21:58.

Thanks for the support. I try to update the blog portion of my site at least once a week. But I do submit a Hexa-Trex puzzle every day, and I add other things, such as lesson plans / tests / real math examples on a more regular basis.

Cheers,

Bogusia