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Projectile Motion Calculator and Graph

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Engineering Excel Spreadsheets

This workbook computes the trajectory of a spherical projectile with fluid drag included. It also demonstrates some additional things that one can do with the Excel/VBA combination. It is actually clearing the screen and replotting at every timestep, but on a fast computer you won't even notice the refresh. For certain combinations of input parameters (e.g., a very light projectile launched in a very heavy fluid - like a beach ball let go from under water) the calculation will go unstable unless you reduce the timestep below the default value. Eventually we will implement an automatic timestep control in the Runge-Kutta procedure used to integrate Newton's Laws of Motion.

Download: Projectile Motion Calculator and Graph