- Aerated Water
- Air Engine
- Air Table
- Are you Hot or Not?
- Balancing Act
- Bending Beams
- Block the gap
- Braille
- Bridge the Gap
- Chalk Wall
- Changing Faces
- Chaotic Motion
- Circle of Discovery
- Circle of Discovery- The Internet
- Circle of Discovery-Bridge Design
- Circle of Discovery-Ideas hub
- Circle of Discovery-Internet
- Circle of Discovery-Medicine
- Circle of Discovery-photography
- Circle of Discovery: Design - Earthquake
- Circulation
- Colour Wheel
- Communication Codes
- Communication Dishes
- Computer
- Crystallography
- Digestive System
- Down the Drain
- Electromagnetic Spectrum
- Fibre Optics
- Flight Simulator
- Gear Table
- Handshake Mirror
- Harmonograph
- High Flyer
- Hit the Target
- Horizontal Periscope
- Human Battery
- It's Electric
- Larger Than Life
- Lift Me Pull You
- Light Table
- Lock Box
- Making Waves
- Mini Harmonograph
- Mobile Phone
- Move It
- Nervous System
- Newtons Cradle
- Organ Pipe
- Organ Pipe Tune
- Oscillating Pendulums
- Pendulums
- People Power
- Periscope
- Prove Pythagoras
- Radar
- Radio Station
- Reactable
- Reflection Refraction
- Robot Arm
- Science of Sport
- Sensation
- Simple Camera
- Simple Circuits
- Smoke Tunnel
- Solar Energy
- Sound Waves
- Structures and Stresses
- Telescope
- The Exhibition
- The Eye
- The Lung and Chest Cavity
- The Wheel Race
- Thermal Imager
- Tornado
- Tower of Hanoi
- Universe Wall
- Up and Down
- Vertical Periscope
- Viscosity
- Viscosity Plungers
- Volume and Mass
- Vortex
- Watch Your Waste
- Weight Lifter
- Wheels Within Wheels
- Wind Tunnel
Hit the Target
This exhibit explores the behavior of a projectile.
This video was made by two year 10 students from The Westgate School, Winchester, as part of their work experience at INTECH.
Instructions:
Try to bounce a ball on the metal plates and into the hole.
- Choose a ball
- Tilt the angled plate at the bottom of the ramp – this changes the angle that the ball launches into the air
- Place a ball in the hole at the top of the ramp
- Gently pull the red trigger to release the ball.
- You can change the angle of the plate or the position of the metal blocks to help you get the ball into the hole
- Can you place hoops so the ball goes through them. (Hoops are available for schools on request).
Ideas for activities with students at this exhibit:
- Discuss the forces acting on the ball.
- Devise an experiment to determine the angle of the plate needed to hit the target.
- Devise an experiment to determine the angle of the plate needed so the ball travels the furthest (tape measures are available from Intech on reqest).
- Devise an experiment to determine the angle of the plate needed so the ball bounces the highest (tape measures are available from Intech on reqest).
- Discuss "Fair Testing" . What can be varied?
- Video the flight of the ball and then use video anaysis modelling software to analyse the flight of the ball. For example Tracker http://www.cabrillo.edu/~dbrown/tracker/ , Tracker is a free video analysis and modeling tool built on the Open Source Physics (OSP) Java framework. It is designed to be used in physics education.
- Measure the speed of the ball (Data loggers and position sensors, light gates etc are available from Intech on request).
More about:
A projectile is an object that is thrown, fired, pitched, hurled or tossed. The study of how projectiles travel through the air is called ballistics.
The only forces acting on a projectile are gravity and air resistance. Without these forces the object would continue flying in a straight line in the direction that it was thrown in until it hit something.
The path the object takes at it goes through the air is called the trajectory. If we ignore air resistance which is small for a smooth, small ball, the only things that affect the shape of the trajectory are the direction and speed that it starts with and gravity. We can’t change gravity. In this exhibit you can change the angle of the plate that the ball hits or the speed of launch.
By changing the angle of the plate and consequently the angle that the ball bounces off the plate, you can change how far the ball goes.
Range= initial velocity x cos (θ) x total time of flight
Total time of flight = 2 x initial velocity x sin(θ) / acceleration due to gravity.
where θ = the angle of launch.
Last Modified: 23/03/2012
