Throw off a Cliff

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Two-dimensional display of the trajectory of an object thrown from a cliff into the sea. Parameters of the trajectory that you can vary are the cliff height , the initial velocity
, and the initial angle
.
Contributed by: Antoine Weis (March 2011)
Additional contributions by: Fernand Brunschwig
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
Snapshots
Details
The trajectory of the object is given by
.
For simplicity, set .
The main goal of the Demonstration is to explore the range of the trajectory, that is, the maximum coordinate that can be achieved with a given height
and a given velocity
. It is well-known that in the case of a ground-to-ground throw (
) the range is maximized for
, as shown by the snapshots. For
this condition no longer holds and the general expression for the range is given by
,
for which the maximal range becomes
.
Permanent Citation