Air Resistance on a Paintball

by Dylan Wilson

Submitted : Spring 2012

A paintball gun works by shooting a paintball at a specific velocity at a given target. In order to hit the target, one must fire at a specific angle to ensure the paintball will reach its target. The project will look at that specific aspect of firing a paintball to indicate the final velocities and amount of time the paintball will take to reach its target. This will be done in two separate cases, one that take air resistance into consideration and one that does not. This will in turn show that in the absence of air resistance the paintball must be fired at a different angle than the case with air resistance. The procedure used to calculate the given aspects of this two-dimensional projectile’s motion involved kinematic equations, the use of a single step Euler method, the use of derivatives, and basic knowledge of formulas in Excel.

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