Georgia Tech is playing Miami (not the real Miami, the other one Miami Florida). Right after a commercial, the camera shows this sign from a student (or just person) at the game:
(Sorry if the image isn't that great.) I had to pause the game and take a closer look at this sign. I am not sure I get it. In case you can't see, the sign shows two players and the trajectory of a ball (clearly labeled x and y axes). The equations are:
So, why am I confused?
- Clearly they (he or she) is calling the x-direction the same as the horizontal direction.
- The student wrote the kinematics equations for the horizontal motion, not the vertical.
- The student left a (for the acceleration) in there. Yes, a football in the air will have a horizontal acceleration due to air resistance. However, wouldn't the vertical acceleration from the gravitational force be more significant?
- One more small point (yes, I know these are all small points - but this is just what I do): In the first two equations, the student wrote x(t) and v(t). The last equation is not written that format. Not really wrong, just odd.
So, if indeed this is a student from Georgia Tech, would he/she have written this correctly? I suspect that it is written incorrectly on purpose. Either this is actually a Miama (FL) student disguised like a Georgia Tech student (to make GT look bad), or it is some secret code.
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Could be they're freshmen, and just hadn't thought it through.
I demand that I get credit for this. My name is spelled Anonymous with three "Q"s.
Is it incorrect to write v^2_f = v^2_i + 2a?x? I've only ever seen it written as that and according to wikipedia it is known as "Torricelli's equation"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torricelli's_equation) It is not a function of anything that I can think of unless you consider it a function of x.