Hawaiian Brian's

This picture, taken at the Class of 2010 Welcome Back Event at Hawaiian Brians, is a picture of me about to serve a ping pong ball and demonstate the properties of a projectile. A projectile, an object that is only acted upon by gravity, is exemplified by the ping pong ball because after it is hit it maintains a constant horizontal velocity, while gravity causes it to travel in a parabolic arc as its positive velocity is slowed by gravity, peaks at 0 m/s, and then accelerates downwards back to the table, all of which is repeated multiple times throughout a rally. A ping pong ball is a projectile because after it is hit, there is no forces acting upon it (ie. jets, etc.) except for gravity. In addition, at Hawaiian Brian's I also played pool (no pictures, unfortunately), which helped to demonstrate Newton's First Law, in which an object tends to remain in its state of motion unless an external force acts upon it, as well as Newton's Third Law, that states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Unless the ball is hit by the cue, it will remain still at equilibrium, in which only gravity is causing it to push against the table, and the table is pushing upwards with the same force, and assuming the pool table was really big and friction was not a factor, the ball would continue to accelerate at the same rate after being hit by a cue. Newton's Third Law applies when the ball is hit with varying forces, whether i wanted to tap a ball in from 3 inches away, or try to bank a shot from across the table, the different amounts of force applied results in a different acceleration.