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2.1: Ball Toss Project

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    88625
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    Purpose of the project: get familiar with the idea of creating a velocity function based on position data

    Shows several still images of a ball being tossed with the following heights: 20cm, 40cm, 55cm, 63cm, 67cm

    Above are frames from a video of a simple ball toss. Every other frame from the 30 frames per second video is shown, so the time between the frames is approximately quicklatex.com-e87fc9a2e559c3d2773c6c3742090142_l3.png of a second.

    1. Fill in the position data for each time in the table below. Velocity is usually defined as \(\frac{\text{Position}}{\text{Time}}\). How could you calculate velocities for each data point? Fill these in as well.
      Time (s) Position (cm) Velocity (cm/s)
      \(0\)
      \(\frac{1}{15}\)
      \(\frac{2}{15}\)
      \(\frac{3}{15}\)
      \(\frac{4}{15}\)
    2. Create two graphs, either by hand or with graphing software: position versus time, and velocity versus time. In each case, time is the \(x\)-axis, while the \(y\)-axis is position in the first graph and velocity in the second graph. How are the two graphs related?

      Going from a position graph to a velocity graph like this is called a derivative, which we’ll talk a lot more about in upcoming chapters.

    3. While your velocity graph is probably not a perfect line, imagine that it is linear for a second. What is the slope of the velocity graph? This is the rate of acceleration due to gravity, an important quantity in physics.

    This page titled 2.1: Ball Toss Project is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Tyler Seacrest via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

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