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.EXPERIMENT: PROJECTILE MOTION

OBJECTIVES

· to ascertain that the parabolic motion of an object in two dimensions can be analyzed by

considering the motion in each dimension separately

· to check for the existence of possible systematic errors in the data by comparing the

obtained values for acceleration in the horizontal and vertical directions with the expected

values

APPARATUS

A pre-recorded video of object in projectile motion will be used.

THEORY

This lab involves a two-dimensional projectile motion problem. Therefore, it goes one step beyond the one-dimensional studies of forces and acceleration done in the previous two labs. The most general projectile motion would involve three dimensions and could be described by referring to the x-, y-, and z-components of the velocity and acceleration vectors in the problem. This componentwise approach greatly simplifies the understanding of the motion. We are able to make this simplification when analyzing parabolic motion because, for example, the x-component of the acceleration affects only the x-component of the velocity, etc. Therefore the equations describing three-dimensional motion simplify to three sets of equations, each of which we already understand from our one-dimensional studies. Further simplification comes through a shrewd choice of the orientation of the coordinate system to be used. If there is only one acceleration vector in the problem, we may choose one axis to be in the direction of that acceleration. This makes two components of the acceleration equal to zero and simplifies the equations of motion considerably. Proper choice of the second axis can often make vz= 0 as well as az = 0, and then the problem involves only two dimensions (x and y) since there is no motion at all in the z-direction. This is the situation in the present experiment. At any time t, the instantaneous velocity of a projectile is a vector, v, tangent to the flight path. This velocity vector can be split up into a...