Shape of a Projectile's Path
With the equations that we have derived we can now get more information about a projectile's motion. This first of which is the shape of the path a projectile takes while in the air.We first solve for t using the equation for position in the x direction:
If we substitute this into the equation for position in the y direction and rearrange the terms a bit:
We can see that the equation looks like a quadratic equation and the path traced by something that follows the quadratic equation has a particular shape... a parabola.
