Exploring Projectile Motion Using an Interactive Simulation

ANOTHER INTERESTING topic in physics is projectile motion. It is a little more challenging than horizontal motion and free fall, because, in fact, it involves both. Projectiles move vertically and horizontally at the same time. If we look around, a lot of things move that way. Understanding of this type of motion has resulted to a lot of applications like in sports, and sad to say, warfare.
If you have been playing the recent mobile game craze, Angry Birds, you should know that it requires some understanding of projectile motion. This interactive flash simulation is similar to Angry Birds. Using this simulation, you can gain better understanding of projectile motion.

In this activity, you will:
  1. Observe how varying initial conditions affect a projectile path(various objects, angles, initial speed, mass, diameter, initial height, with and without air resistance).
  2. Use reasoning to explain the observations.
  3. Explain common projectile motion terms in their own words. (launch angle, initial speed, maximum height, range, final height, time).
Explore this simulation below. Your browser must have a flash player installed to be able to use this. This simulation may also downloaded from this site: PHET.

Use this form below, which you shall download and fill-out.

After accomplishing this document. Upload it to our e-Group. Enjoy learning!

Ariel Lalisan

Ariel Lalisan

Ariel Lalisan is a physics teacher at Alabel National Science High School. He is an advocate of constructivism approach in education. He employs active learning and independent learning in his lessons, and, of course, a lot of technology integration. His goal is to produce students who can solve problems on their own using the concepts they learn in the classroom. Ariel Lalisan is a Google Certified Innovator (Google Teachers Academy Southeast Asia 2014) and a community leader at Google Educator Group Sarangani. He is a co-founder of SoCCSKSarGen and he won the Globe Media Excellence Blogger of the Year Award in 2015.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
Twitter Facebook Google Plus

One thought on “Exploring Projectile Motion Using an Interactive Simulation

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *