Physics 5A

Lecture 7
Projectile motion
 Free-fall motion
• Example: A ball is tossed straight up from the edge of a 10 m high building
at 9 m/s.

(a) How long does it take the ball to reach the ground?

(b) How fast is the ball moving when it reaches the ground?

(c) What is the maximum height the ball reaches, and how long does it take
the ball to reach this height?
(d) How long does it take the ball to return to the height from which it was
thrown?
(e) How fast is the ball moving when it returns to its initial height?
 Free-fall motion
A few general conclusions about free-fall motion:

• Time to return to initial height is always twice time to reach

maximum height

• Speed is constant at any given height

• Free-fall equations do not describe interactions between objects and the

ground. These equations only apply up to the instant before an object hits
the ground. (So you cannot say “v = 0 once the object hits the ground”)
 Projectile motion
• Free-fall is one-dimensional (purely vertical) motion under the in uence of
gravity. What if we throw or launch an object so that its velocity has both
vertical and horizontal components?

v⃗

• The result is two-dimensional projectile motion. In this case we have to

account for both the horizontal and vertical motion of the projectile. Our
position, velocity, acceleration, etc. will now have two components

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 Projectile motion
• I’ll work in coordinates where the x-axis points right and the y-axis points
up. Since the gravitational acceleration points down, only its y-component
is non-zero.
y
• The components of a ⃗ are

ax = 0
ay
ay = − g a⃗

x
ax = 0
 Projectile motion
• We can describe projectile motion using separate position/velocity
equations for the x- and y-components.

• Since ax is zero, the motion in the x direction is uniform motion.

• In the y direction, we have the free-fall acceleration ay = − g,

so the motion in the y direction is free-fall motion.

• We can describe motion in each direction independently using the same

position/velocity equations we’ve already written down. The only difference
is we have to keep track of both x and y motion simultaneously.
 Projectile motion
• Let v0⃗ = v(0)
⃗ be the initial velocity of the projectile with components v0x
and v0y.

• For the uniform horizontal motion, we have y

x(t) = x0 + v0xt
vx(t) = v0x
v0⃗
v0y
• For the vertical free-fall motion we have
1 2
y(t) = y0 + v0yt − gt
2
vy(t) = v0y − gt x
v0x
 Projectile motion
• Often, the initial velocity in projectile motion problems is given as a
magnitude and direction rather than in components.

• The magnitude of the initial velocity is the launch speed v0, and the
direction is speci ed by the launch angle θ — the angle v0⃗ measured from
the horizontal
y
v0⃗

x
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 Projectile motion
• We would like to express the components of the initial velocity vector v0⃗ in
terms of v0 and θ. Finding the components like this is called decomposing
the vector, and it’s something we will do a lot in 5A.

• We can decompose v0⃗ (or any vector) using trigonometry.

y

x
 Projectile motion
• First, we draw a right triangle with our vector as the hypotenuse and the
two other sides parallel to the coordinate axes.
y
v0
v0y
θ
v0x
x
• The length of the hypotenuse is the magnitude of the vector, and the
lengths of the sides are the components of the vector.
 Projectile motion
• Now we can use sine and cosine to relate the components to the launch
speed and launch angle.

• The vertical side of the triangle is opposite the angle θ, v0

so
v0y
sin θ =
opp v0y
= θ
hyp v0 v0x
We get

v0y = v0 sin θ
 Projectile motion
• The vertical side of the triangle is adjacent to the angle θ, so

adj v0x
cos θ = =
hyp v0 v0
We get v0y
v0x = v0 cos θ θ
v0x
• The components of our initial velocity vector are
v0x = v0 cos θ
v0y = v0 sin θ
 Projectile motion
• We can substitute these expressions for the components into our
projectile motion equations to get

x(t) = x0 + (v0 cos θ) t

vx(t) = v0 cos θ

1 2
y(t) = y0 + (v0 sin θ) t − gt
2
vy(t) = v0 sin θ − gt
 Projectile motion
• The path (or trajectory) of an object in projectile motion is a parabola. We
can see this from the fact that y(x) is a quadratic function of x

g 2
y(x) = x tan θ − 2 x
2v0 cos2 θ
 Projectile motion
• The velocity vector at each point in the motion points tangent to the object’s
path

• The acceleration vector is constant and points down

 Projectile motion
• A natural question to ask: suppose we launch a projectile from the ground
at a given launch speed and angle. How far does it travel before returning to
the ground?

R
• We call this distance R the horizontal range of the projectile.
 Projectile motion
• We can nd the range by setting y(t) = 0 to solve for the time to the
ground, then plugging this time in to x(t). We end up with

2
v0 sin(2θ)
R=
g

• Note that this formula only applies to the case when the launch height and
landing height are the same (for example, starting and ending on level
ground). This formula will not give us the range if the projectile starts above
or below the landing height. (But the same solution method will work in all
cases.)
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