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Field Hockey and Projectiles



During my junior year of high school, my 5th year playing field hockey, i made several connections with field hockey and physics, whether i wanted to or not. As center mid for my team, i am involved in almost every play, so i see in every way, shape and form how physics dictates the way the game is played. In our sectional game i had a beautiful aerial that went over everyone and straight into the circle where a teammate was and the play lead to a beautiful goal, which helped us with the game! Later i then realized that the aerial that i played was a perfect example of a projectile. Since the ball was only being impacted on by gravity it made it the perfect real life application to physics. The ball when i lifted it flew in a path of a parabolic arc due to the fact that it was sent into the air at an angle. This also means that the ball had the same speed the minute it left my stick to the moment just before it hit the ground. The fact that the ball also became a projectile the minute it left my stick means that the horizontal components and the vertical components are different, and only the time is transferable between the two. For example the acceleration of the vertical component of the ball was 9.81 m/s^2 where as the acceleration for the horizontal component of the ball was 0. This is due to the fact that the ball had no force pulling it horizontally, which meant that the horizontal speed remained constant, however, there was a force acting on the ball vertically, gravity, this then pulled at the ball with an acceleration of 9.81 m/s^2 increasing the velocity of the ball as it fell. Field Hockey is truly filled with physics, and the projectiles are just one small component of the sport.

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Field Hockey seems like a fun activity to participate in. It is cool how you were able to connect the ball to physics with it being a projectile and the different velocities and accelerations it experiences.

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