Ball Trajectory Planning

[Bill_B]

Originally Posted by slijin

I made this for my team (you need GeoGebra to run it), which basically simulates projectile motion of the ball (ignoring all other factors). You can drag around V to shift the muzzle velocity and firing angle, as well as Height and Backboard to modify distances. Everything is considered relative to the point of release. There are obvious problems with it, but it does provide a nice model for the basic concepts here.

Samuel, Thanks for posting this. Very neat way to visualize the basic trajectories involved this year. I was moving the backboard value and got a y-displacement doing it that altered the paths. Whoa, says I. Backboard distance should not alter the path, should it? Then I went on a search for a formula using y(backboard) - fruitlessly. Turns out that theta is defined as an angle involving backboard as a vector. I changed theta's definition to be angle(V) and things look more reasonable now. But in case I missed something (neophyte geogebra-ist and all) I hope you can explain why you had theta defined the way you did.