Projectiles

A Cannon Firing a Projectile
Fig. 1 - A Projectile Fired From a Cannon

In 1600s, armies used equations of motions to calculate velocities and angle for firing a missile to hit a target. While a quarterback does not do explicit calculations using equations of motion, a computerized football game will certainly need to do these calculations.

We will use the metric notations that are favored for all scientific and engineering calculations

Abbreviations

Notations

Abbreviation Meaning
u Initial velocity
v Final velocity
a Acceleration
t Time
s Distance

Equations

  1. a = (v - u) / t, which can be arranged to get the following equation
  2. t = (v - u) / a, which can be further arranged as
  3. v = u + a * t
  4. s = u * t + 0.5 * a * t 2, another useful equation of motion
Physics Information