Ballistics
Wednesday 22nd January
Tielt, De Bron
Louise Lambrecht, Mathijs Matton, Jari Bogaert, Gaëtan D’haeyere, Janne Schoonbaert and Robin
Bourgeois: these are the names of the scientists of
ballistics. First we explained the trajectory of the
bullet with our simulation. We demonstrated
this with a self-made spud gun. After we shot a
few times with our gun in the playground, it
became clear that it was a parabolic trajectory.
Secondly we did the practicum, with a very
sophisticated explanation of the Belgian
scientists. What did we need? A launching tube,
some bullets, a vertical plate, carbon paper, a
grid, protractor, a monopod, tape, normal paper.
We attached the carbon paper to the normal
paper and stuck this on the vertical plate. When
everything was attached, we put the launch tube
against the vertical plate. The grid was stuck on
the table so that it wouldn’t move and influence
our results. Then we started the real experiment:
we inserted the bullet into the tube. We had to
repeat this 3 times, as is always done in a real
scientific experiment. Then we moved the vertical
plate one square to the back and one to the right.
We repeated this until the bullet couldn’t reach the vertical plate anymore. After we did that, we
had to make a graph to search the quadratic conjunction between x and y. We found out that y/x²
is invariable. Conclusion: we found this result by taking the average of our three measurements from
each point. So this experiment proved that the bullet has a parabolic trajectory and not a random
one. This helped the soldiers to calculate the trajectory of the bullet so it wouldn’t land on their own
troops.