Projectiles are an undeniably useful weapon, regardless of time period, environment or circumstance. They allow us to take advantage of a fundamental attacking concept; the ability to strike an enemy from range. Let us take the simple example of a small child taking on the school bully. He cannot go toe-to-toe with the bully, as he does not have enough strength to hurt the bully in hand to hand combat. But he does have enough strength to throw a stone from across the playground at such an angle and velocity that it hits and hurts him. In this situation, our child can hurt a stronger opponent while guaranteeing that he himself will remain unharmed in the short term at least.

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The origins of our understanding of projectile motion lie in succession of the work of Aristotle. He peddled the belief that projectiles are guided in a certain direction by an external force that is transmitted through the air. The next development from this theory was the idea of ‘impetus’, which was the internalised version of this force. This ‘impetus’ ran out with the continued motion of the projectile, at which point the projectile was supposed to fall straight to the ground.

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It was Galileo who developed our modern understanding of projectiles (on a macroscopic scale at least). He devised an experimental set up in which an ink bronze ball was deflected into the horizontal plane by a curved piece at the bottom of an inclined plane. The ball would then roll off the table at a constant velocity. The patch of ink left on the floor as a result allowed Galileo to measure the displacement in the vertical and horizontal directions from where the ball left the table. From this Galileo was able to derive what we now know as the SUVAT equations; which gives us a firm understanding of basic projectile motion.