What Is Projectile Motion?

Video Transcript

"Hello my name is Remy Dou, I am a science teacher here at Miami Christian School in Miami, Florida. Let's talk a little bit about projectile motion. And first of all you have to ask yourself what is projectile motion. And even more basic than that what is a projectile. And a projectile is any object that is thrown or launched. A missile would not be a projectile, because a missile has it's own thrust. It has like it's own engine. But when something is thrown or launched, and doesn't isn't continually being acted upon by another force, then it is considered a projectile. And projectiles usually move in pretty much the same shape, it's an arc called a parabola. And the size of the parabola varies depending on how strong the thrust was that initially launched or threw the object. A perfect example of a projectile is a free throw shot at a basketball game. The shooter lines up his throw, he shoots, and you see a perfect parabola, the ball hopefully will be nothing but net goes through the hoop. And so when you are considering projectile motion you want to basically look at two features. You want to look at the horizontal and the vertical features. Horizontal is how far forward the projectile is going to travel, and the vertical is how high up. If you know some of the initial conditions like how hard it was thrown initially, then you can determine the height that the projectile will travel. You can determine the distance the projectile will travel as well. As well as the time that it is in the air. This is especially important in warfare. Believe it or not most people don't know that snipers. when they are shooting, they have to considered projectile motion, because bullets are effect by projectile motion. And their path can be bent due to gravity."