Two-Dimensional Motion Produced by the Physics Staff at Collin County Community College Copyright Collin College Physics Department. All Rights Reserved. University Physics, Exp 4: Two-Dimensional Motion Page 2 Purpose In Experiment 3 you explored the motion of an object when its displacement, velocity, and acceleration vectors were all in the same direction. In this experiment, you will investigate the motion that results when these vectors can have any direction in a plane, i.e., in two- dimensional space. Such motion is far more common in nature than motion in one dimension; indeed, it is even more common than motion in three dimensions. Examples of natural and man-made projectile motion range from thrown balls to fired bullets and arrows to the stream of electrons in a TV picture tube. Equipment Computer with Internet Access Introduction In your lecture class, you learned that you can determine the position r(t) and velocity v(t) at any time t of an object moving with constant acceleration if you know (or can measure) its original position ro, its original velocity vo, and its acceleration a. As long as its acceleration is constant, the motion of the object is completely described by the following two relationships