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Fun with Snowballs!


Whats the best way to spend a snow day? Of course throwing snowballs using the perfect freshly- fallen 14 inches of snow we got. I thought it would be a great idea to analyse the physics in motion of throwing a snowball. Snowball fights, such a classic way to have fun in the show, can show us how physics is at every corner in our daily lives.




Now, Bella doesn't have the best arm in the world, but her soft toss of a snowball was perfect to analyse. After review of this video, we came up with the interesting idea to plug it into Logger Pro, plot points, and analyze the graph resulting. After toying around with some of the functions and different kind of graphs we could conjure, we figured a simple distance vs. time graph with an integral captured the motion of Bella's speed ball.
By finding the integral of my x distance vs time graph, Bella and I were able to determine the velocity at which she tossed the snowball. After analysis, she threw the snowball at 1.72 m/s. As seen in the video, her throw was short, only covering a distance of 2.5 meters. But nevertheless, she is training hard for the next snow day



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