3.4: Projectile Motion and Trajectory
Topic outline
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Often, physics problems occur on the surface of the Earth, such as footballs being kicked, rockets being fired, and daredevils riding their motorcycles off cliffs. This means that the y-component of these two-dimensional motions involve acceleration pointing downward while the x-component does not have any acceleration. We call these types of motion projectile motion.
We define projectile motion as the motion of a thrown object that only feels the acceleration of gravity. The projectile is the object being thrown; the trajectory is the path the object takes when it is thrown.
We need to use the kinematic equations we learned in Unit 2 of this course to calculate projectile motion, for each of the two-dimensions separately. Note that we assume there is no air resistance when we perform projectile motion calculations – so gravity is the only force acting on the projectile. -