Projectiles

Galileo showed that all projectiles follow a parabolic path. What an object (projectile) is doing in one dimension has no bearing on the other dimensions. The time it takes an object to go straight up and come back down is the same amount of time that it takes for the object to go up the same height and travel 100 kilometers away.   He showed that a projectile's motion can break down as it moves along both vertical and horizontal directions. This means that if a ball is thrown horizontally and air friction is ignored, that ball will move in the horizontal direction with constant speed; in the vertical direction it will experience the pull of gravity and will undergo free fall.

(Information from Jose Wudka, University of California, Riverside) http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node50.html#SECTION02422200000000000000

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