2008 HS Photo Contest Pictures
2008 AAPT High School Physics Photo Contest Click on image to resize 
Special Recognition
- Possible New Category
This photograph was created to display the projectile path of a basketball shot by showing the point of the ball’s flight every tenth of a second. The distance that the ball rises over a tenth of a second (velocity) decreases until the ball reaches its peak. This is due to the negative acceleration of gravity, which decreases the velocity of the ball until it reaches a velocity of zero, which is displayed at the peak of the flight. The ball is accelerating in the opposite direction, which causes its velocity to decrease, and the distance the ball covers in a tenth of a second decreases. As the ball has peaked and possesses a vertical velocity of zero, gravity continues to accelerate the ball towards the ground, and as the accelerating ball increases in velocity over time, the distance between the ball’s points at each tenth of a second increases. This causes the peack of the projectile motion to appear rounded. The ball then continues to accelerate, which causes the points to become farther apart as the ball descends. Since the horizontal motion has minimal force acting against it, the ball holds a nearly constant horizontal velocity throughout the path. With the acceleration of the vertical movement of the ball as well as its virtually constant horizontal movement, the ball’s motion assumes a parabolic path.
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