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In addition to the revision notes for Motion in Two Dimensions. Projectile Motion on this page, you can also access the following Kinematics learning resources for Motion in Two Dimensions. Projectile Motion
| Tutorial ID | Title | Tutorial | Video Tutorial | Revision Notes | Revision Questions | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.12 | Motion in Two Dimensions. Projectile Motion |
In these revision notes for Motion in Two Dimensions. Projectile Motion, we cover the following key points:
Projectile motion is a kind of motion experienced by an object that is projected near the Earth's surface and moves along a curved path under the action of gravity only (if the effects of air resistance are assumed to be negligible). This curved path is a parabola. The study of such motions is called ballistics, and such a trajectory is known as a ballistic trajectory.
The direction of the initial velocity vector is according the tangent to the line at the given point.
In absence of air resistance, the only acceleration acting on a projectile is the gravitational acceleration g⃗. It is a vertical (downward) acceleration, therefore the horizontal part of the motion does not contain any acceleration (it is a uniform motion). Hence, it is necessary to study the horizontal and the vertical components of projectile separately because the horizontal component represents a uniform motion and the vertical component a uniformly decelerated motion when moving up and a uniformly accelerated motion when falling down.
The equations of projectile are:
Horizontally,
and vertically,
Or
Or
Or
The last equation is known as the equation of motion for the vertical component of a projectile. Thus, we have
Or
Therefore, the vertical position y as a function of time t is
It allows us to determine the vertical position of an object at every instant t when the initial parameters (the initial vertical coordinate y0 and the initial velocity v0) are known.
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