Projectile

during the Middle Ages. With war prevalent throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, the popularity of fortified castle and city walls rose significantly. This made Catapults a necessity for many armies during this era. Catapults were used to launch projectiles which in our society today acted as missiles for them. They destroyed enemy walls and troops in one massive blow. These missiles were either launched directly at the wall to cause huge amounts of damage to the fortifications or were…

launch a projectile at high speed. It is made up of one or more magnet stages, which consists of a magnet and two ball bearings on one side. The number of magnet stages can determine how fast or how slow the projectile can go. It should be noted that this project is not an actual weapon, and will not be able to cause harm to any person hit by the ball bearing. The Gauss Rifle is a small-scale version of a rail gun. A rail gun uses electromagnets, not normal magnets, to launch a projectile. The…

This is the kind of catapult that is normally seen in film and is made of a long wooden throwing arm that is pulled back to 90o and is fired by the tension of the rope. The mangonel fired its projectiles in an arc, which was very different from the straight shot of the ballista and the heights of the projectiles reached approximately 1,300 ft. The trebuchet is the final type of catapult and was the most powerful. The potential energy of the trebuchet was created and held in the counterbalance,…

the second experiment, the conditions are slightly different… In the third experiment, projectile motion… Experiment # 1 – Measuring the Acceleration of Gravity The object in motion is said to be in free fall. That is because the only force that is acting on the object is said to be the…

bore, the type of projectiles it can fire, how far the range is, and how much they cost. A rifle gets its name from the presence of spiral grooves in the bore that is known as “rifling.” These grooves spin the bullet, thus increasing the rifle’s range and accuracy. A shotgun’s barrel wall is thinner than that of a rife and it contains a “smooth” bore, meaning the inside of the barrel does not have the spiral grooves. Shotguns use the smooth bore because of the type of projectile it shoots.…

walls were being built taller and stronger. Because of this, the catapult was a new and stronger weapon that was commonly used. A catapult was a large machine on wheels with a long wooden arm that had a basket attached to it at the end to hurl projectiles at something. Around 400 BC, the first catapult was invented in Greece. It is not the version that most people are used to seeing. It was called Gastraphete and it looked like a crossbow more than a catapult. It also worked similar to a…

killing innocent people. My textbook taught me about the importance of drag in preventing Felix Baumgartner from reaching speeds that would physically break him. However, throughout my entire physics career, air resistance was never included in projectile motion. The concept of resistance was explained, such as friction and the many other types of resistance, but there was only a brief overview. When I inquired, I found out that air resistance is negligible and therefore left out because it…

A firearm is a weapon from which a projectile-such as a bullet- is shot and is discharged by some chemical-usually gunpowder. It is believed that the origin of gunpowder is from Turkey, Europe, or China. The first combination of chemicals recorded was by Franciscan monk Roger Bacon around the time of 1250 A.D. The compounds were sulphur, charcoal, and saltpeter; which produced a rapidly burning and exploding powder. Around fifty years later, the first cannons were being developed. It consisted…

The Cherokee nation tells a story to their children about the origins of hunting. In the story, Kanati or “Fortunate Hunter,” teaches his twin sons a lesson after they comment a careless act with the animals of the forest. The story ends with Kanati telling his children that they must always be careful when dealing with nature, and they must always think before they act while in the wilderness. To the Natives, hunting was extremely labor intensive and great skill was required to bring meat back…

to shoot down missiles, projectiles, drones, and other unmanned aerial vehicles (Anthony, 2014). In addition, the high-powered laser was able to melt holes on the hulls of armored ships. In the near future, the Navy hopes to launch its Littoral Combat Ships, as well as the Arleigh-Burke class Destroyers, deployed with the Laser Weapon System (Freedberg, 2014). These systems would act as short-ranged, self-defense systems against drones, boats, and incoming enemy projectiles. LaWSs would replace…