Running head: LAB REPORT ON PROJECTILE MOTION.

Lab Report on Projectile Motion

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Firstname Lastname

SCI 110 – Week 5 Lab Report

February 5th 2019

Professor: Peter Chow

Lab Report on Projectile Motion

Introduction

A falling body faces a vertical force termed known as the force of gravity or gravitational

acceleration. When a body such as pistol, stone is released in air from the ground and allowed to

move upward, it undergoes projectile motion termed as a ballistic motion (Olesnicky, 2003). An

object launched in air faces three motions such as, forces due to air resistance, gravitational force

and the force of launch called the push. In this experiment, forces due to air resistance will be

neglected since they have least effects. Three factors consider for the projectile include; initial

velocity, the angle of launch, and the initial height of launch (Bernardo, Esguerra, Vallejos, &

Canda, 2015).

Having the three factors for projectile, some projectile quantities can be calculated. These

quantities include the projectile range, the maximum height of projectile and time of flight.

Figure 2.1 Diagram showing projectiles of a motion

During the experiment, launch angle, projectile range and initial velocity of the projectile is

measured. The equation below gives the range of the projectile (Mody, 2015)

Purpose of the Experiment

The aim of this experiment was:

To study the ballistic motion of a ball under gravitational acceleration with varying launch angle.

The experiment dwells in determination of range as one of the projectile’s quantities. During the

experiment, the projectile motion is placed along x and y-axis. Gravitational force is considered

to be on the vertical direction and is considered constant. For instance, this type of motion can be

a free fall ( Soifer, & Becker, 2011). Having no forces acting on it with zero acceleration along

x-axis constant velocity motion is on the horizontal direction.

Hypothesis of the Experiment

The statement of hypothesis was;

Air resistance lowers the value of gravitational acceleration

Equipment and/or Materials Used for this Experiment

The equipments and apparatus used were;

i. Meter rod

ii. Wood ball

iii. Carbon paper

iv. Ballistic launcher unit with a velocity meter

Figure of Projectile launcher experimental setup (1)

Experimental Procedure

i. The experimental procedures were as follows:

ii. The projectile was taken to be a wooden ball and it was launched in the air using ballistic

unit

iii. The string was loaded with different amount of forces prior to experiment. After loading

the spring, records of initial velocity and angle of launch were taken.

iv. The projectile range was measured by meter rule.

v. The above procedures were repeated four times and the values of initial velocity and

range tabulated

vi. The angle of launch was varied from 30 degrees to 70 degrees while the ballistic unit was

aligned with the bench in order to reduce movements

vii. Finally the errors obtained from the measuring instrument were record as well
 LAB REPORT ON PROJECTILE MOTION 5

Experimental Results

The values for the projectile range, initial velocities and the values of launch angles together with

their uncertainties were recorded as shown in the table below.

Initial Velocity (m/s) Range (m)

V R R
V (T2) V (T3) R(T2) R (T3)
Uncertainty (T1) (T1) V
(m/s) (m/s) (cm) (cm)
Angle angle (m/s) (cm) (average ) (average)

0 0.5 2.83 2.8 2.81 68.8 67.8 68.1 2.81 68.23

35 0.5 2.82 2.84 2.8 73.3 74.3 74.9 2.82 74.17

45 0.5 2.82 2.83 2.8 80.4 80.5 79.8 2.82 80.23

55 0.5 2.78 2.78 2.81 72.9 72.3 73.2 2.79 72.80

60 0.5 2.76 2.78 2.8 66.7 66.8 68.1 2.78 67.20

70 0.5 2.81 2.81 2.78 51.4 51.9 51.1 2.80 51.47

2.80 69.02

The table above clearly shows that the overall average of the initial velocity was 𝑣0𝑎 =

2.80 𝑚𝑠 −1 with uncertainty of0.5.

Average

Initial

Launch velocity

angle sin(2α) u(sin(2α)) u (Vav) u(Rav)

30 0.87 0.0087 0.0088 0.2963

35 0.94 0.0060 0.0115 0.4667

45 1 0.0000 0.0088 0.2186

55 0.94 -0.0060 0.0100 0.2646

60 0.87 -0.0087 0.0115 0.4509

70 0.64 -0.0134 0.0100 0.2333

A graph of sin 2(𝜃) 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒 𝑅𝑎𝑣 was drawn with their respective error

bars.

R(av) VS sin(2α)
90.00
80.00
70.00
60.00
50.00
R(av)

40.00
30.00
20.00 y = 77.143x + 1.3881
10.00 R² = 0.9865
0.00
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
sin(2α)
 LAB REPORT ON PROJECTILE MOTION 7

From the graph, the y-intercept is equal to 1.3881 with a gradient of 77.143 and R2 of 0.9865

Interpretation of the Results

From the result it can be seen that initial velocity changed as the launched angle was changed

from zero to 30 degrees. The reason behind this was that an increase in launch angle results into

an increase in the range with constant vertical acceleration (Breite, 2010).

The Newton’s second law, which relates acceleration of an object to the force applied on it, we

expected the acceleration to increase due to increased force.

The experiment involved a lot of errors, which were faced due to the following reasons

i. Uncertainties brought about by weather changes for instance effects of wind and air

resistance which were assumed to be having minimal effects

ii. The uncertainties were also brought by fault materials, which brought about wrong

recordings and values.

iii. The third reason for errors was due to scaling of the ruler and uncertainty in measuring the

launch angle, these were random errors which were transferred to other quantities of material

iv. Finally, wrong results could have been caused during computation and entering of the data in

the table. These are termed as the human errors

Conclusion

It can be concluded that acceleration due to gravity is constant and it does not rely on air friction.

The resistance due to air reduces the value of gravitational acceleration. Air resistance is anti-

gravity hence reduces the object velocity.

The forces due to static friction have no effect on gravitational acceleration this is because glider

undergoes kinetic friction.

References

Soifer,, M., & Becker, R. (2011). Equations of Projectile Motion in a Flexible Gun Tube (3rd

ed.). Defense Technical Information Center.

Bernardo, R. C., Esguerra, J. P., Vallejos, J. D., & Canda, J. J. (2015). Wind-influenced

Projectile Motion (6th ed.). IOP Publishing.

Breite, R. B. (2010). Physics Laboratory Eperiments . PHYWE Systeme GmbH & Co. KG.

Mody, V. (2015). High School Physics: Projectile Motion. CreateSpace Independent Publishing

Platform.

Olesnicky, A. (2003). Physics: Projectile motion (2nd ed.). Greg Eather,.