projectile motion

This weekend I went to Waimea Bay and suddenly saw physics!! In this picture, a man is jumping off of the BIG rock in the bay, displaying a beautiful projectile motion. Our book defines projectile motions as movements determined by an object’s initial velocity and the constant acceleration of gravity. This motion can be broken up into two vectors, horizontal and vertical. In this case, the man doing the jumping is the projectile and the only force acting on him is gravity. The man starts his leap by jumping off the rock horizontally. His horizontal velocity isn’t affected by gravity and remains constant throughout his jump, but gravity does affect his vertical motion which accelerates him towards the water. As he moves through the air, this vertical (y) velocity becomes increasingly negative (he is accelerating at 9.8m/s2 in the negative direction) until he hits the water below. Projectile motions…very fun :D