Projectile Animation

A projectile is an object fired or thrown by force. Play with the sliders to see how a projectile moves:

images/projectile.js

Parabola

When drag is zero the projectile's path is a parabola.

Try different angles, which angle takes the projectile farthest along? So what angle should you throw at if you want a ball to go far away?

Can you hit the same spot using different power/angle combinations?

Why?

Why does it make this shape? As the projectile flies, two things happen at the same time:

It moves forward at a steady speed
Gravity pulls it down, slowing its rise, then making it fall faster and faster

When we combine steady forward motion with downward gravity, we get a beautiful parabola.

Drag

A moving projectile gets slowed down by the air (or water and so on) that it moves through. This is called "drag", and is actually a complicated subject.

Here we just use the simple approximation that drag is proportional to the square of the velocity.