A Golf Ball Trajectory Experiment

Many sports,^1,2 including football, soccer, basketball, baseball,³ tennis,⁴ and golf,^5,6 involve trajectories,⁷ and students’ interest in these sports can be used to advantage when investigating trajectories. We therefore introduced the present experiment,⁸ in which the students make measurements of the flight times, maximum heights, and ranges of golf balls launched at a variety of angles across a football field by a slingshot. Because this involves a large amount of data, the experiment was conceived as a cooperative effort for the whole class, and students learned to work as parts of teams, which then presented their results to the whole class. The students also learned that real-world experiments require planning, organization, cooperation, and some public relations. The safety of the general public as well as of the experimenters had to be the first consideration, and it was the responsibility of one student to check that...