Monday, September 20, 2010

Blog 2


Cleaning out my house I normally find something I haven't seen in forever.  Normally, I find something small like a stuffed animal, or a book, but today, I unearthed our long lost Nerf Dart Tag set.  I thought for sure my mom would have gotten rid of this crazy contraption by now, finding it hidden away in a shelf, although a little dusty, was a pleasant surprise.  I realized that the small, foam darts were perfect examples of projectile motion.  The dart started off initially with only horizontal velocity and no verticle velocity, but once it was shot out of the gun, gravity began to act upon the little orange dart.  The horizontal velocity stayed constant while the vertocal velocity decreased due to gravity acting upon the object in free fall.  I never realized all the physics that went on behind the shooting of the Nerf gun, but I am glad its there to make it work or else shooting my brother wouldn't be as fun :)

6 comments:

  1. Isn't it amazing when we realize how something works, it becomes much more fun? Hehe =) Am I the only one who doesn't own a Nerf gun? lol

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  2. Haha that was funny! I never even thought about the projectile motion of nerf guns before! Cool!!!

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  3. LOL nice post! I want a nerf gun now T-T....If you watch closely, there's a ripple effect on your brother's shirt when it hit :O

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  4. Geeze. I don't even own a Nerf gun. Maybe because my mom doesn't want me aiming it at my sister. haha. It would be so fun aiming it at her. hahahaha

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  5. I always thought nerf bullets curved so much because they were so slow, but apparently it just seems that way because gravity is acting the same amount on those bullets as they would on say, a real bullet. Physics applies to the real world once again!

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  6. Those nerd guns are awesome! That's a cool example of projectile motion. It would be super awesome if you figured out the initial velocity that the gun fires at with the displacement and time.

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