Name: ____________________________ Date Performed: ______________
Subject: ___________________________ Group No. ___________________
Laboratory Work No. 4
HORIZONTAL PROJECTILE MOTION
OBJECTIVE: To predict where your ball will land!
APPARATUS:
Empty wrapping paper tube
Tape
Books to stack
Stopwatch
Box cutter
Ping pong ball or rubber ball
Table
Meter stick
Pape
Markers
PROCEDURE:
1. Have an adult use the box cutter to cut the cardboard tube in half to create the
ramp.
2. While they are cutting, use the piece of paper to draw a target. You will be
trying to get to ball to land on the target on the floor, as accurately as possible.
3. Stack some books on a table and tape the top of the cardboard tube to the book
top to make the ramp. Leave a bit of space at the end of the table as shown
below. Why is this important?
4. Measure the length of the ramp.
5. Use the stopwatch to time how long it takes for the ball to slide down the ramp.
Use this time to calculate the velocity the ball will have when it goes over the edge
of the table:
where:
v is velocity in meters per second
d is the length of the ramp in meters
t is the time it takes for the ball to reach the end of the ramp, in seconds.
6. It may be helpful to take your time measurement several times and then
calculate a velocity.
7. Measure the height of the table to the ground. Using the acceleration of gravity
and a starting velocity of zero m/s, calculate how long it will take the ball to fall to
the ground. You can do so using the following equation:
8. Where t is time, h is height, and g is gravitational acceleration, or 9.8 meters
per second per second.
9. Now, calculate the distance the ball will travel before hitting the ground (R).
Simply multiply the ball’s velocity by the time you calculated in step 7. Place your
target at this distance away from the edge of the table!
Data Results: Tabulate data and results as follow.
Trials d (cm) h (cm) R(cm) t (sec) v (cm/sec)
1
2
3
4
5
PICTURES:
COMPUTATIONS:
REMARKS AND CONCLUSIONS:
QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS:
1. Define or explain the following:
a) Projectile
b) Trajectory
c) Range
d) Fall of a projectile
2. Derive the working equation for the velocity as described in the procedure.
3. A ball is projected horizontally with a velocity of 50 m/sec. determine:
a) the range and fall of the ball for each of the following time intervals:
1 sec, 2 secs, 3 secs,
4 secs, 5 secs.
b) using an appropriate scale, plot the points described by the values
in (a) and trace the path of the ball up to time of 5 secs by drawing
a parabolic curve through the mean of the points.