So the other day I woke up with a great idea to center some math (and science around); Tennis.
The idea would be to watch several tennis players playing aces where they send the ball down the line. Hopefully this will generate some questions such as
- how fast the ball is going?
- how do they get the ball to hit the line?
- why do they make noises when they hit the ball?
- how does the spin of the ball effect the motion of the ball after it hits the ground?
- etc...
From this you could get into approximating the path of the ball as a straight line. With the aid of similar triangles students could calculate the speed by knowing the dimensions involved. By knowing the position the ball strikes and the height of the tennis pro and reach. Getting the tennis players height seems to be like an easy stat but the reach might be harder to get. In order to solve that part of the problem some statistic could be used to explore the ratios between height and reach etc.
In order to get a deep analysis the students could then move on to 2d projectile motion and see how the values change in this realistic model. Then what would happen if air resistance would be a factor?
