Projectile Motion

For this week's lab, we went down to the gym and played some basketball while measuring the projectile motion of the basketball. We used the Video Physics app to create motion maps from the video of the shot at the basket. Then, we created graphs for the x and y components, the position over time and a velocity over time graph in the horizontal direction (x) and the vertical direction (y). 

The graph to the left on top shows the x position over time.  The change in position over the change in time represents the slope, which is is constant.  The change in position over the change in time is also velocity, which is constant. The graph below to the left shows the x velocity over time.  The change in velocity over the change in time is acceleration.  Because the slope of the line in this graph is 0,  there is no acceleration and no net force.

The top graph to the right shows the y position over time. The change in position over the change in time is the slope and velocity. The slope is not constant--therefore, the object is accelerating. The bottom graph to the right shows the y velocity over time. The decreasing line crosses the x-axis, and at that moment the object has a velocity of 0, which means it is at its peak. The rest of the time it is decreasing.