Volleyball Physics

Last weekend, I went to one of my sister's volleyball games. (She's the one standing closest to the net by the way.) Anyway, while I was in the bleachers, I was intensely thinking about a topic to make my blog on. It wasn't until halfway through the game that I realize there was physics happening right in front of me.

Everytime the ball was bumped into the air, it made a perfect parabola with its path. It stopped moving when it hit a certain point and came back down to another player's arms...or the floor. I knew that was because of gravity acting upon the ball. I got so excited that I started babbling about physics to my mom and dad who were trying to watch the game. When they told me to stop talking, I whipped out my camera and started taking pictures.

In the pictures above, I colored over the ball in bright green to make it more noticeable. If you look from left to right in the rows, you can see the ball's arc and its highest point, which happens in around the second picture. After that picture, the ball begins to come down.

My sister, who is at the net, sees that the ball is not going to make it over, judging by its arc, and jumps to tip it over in the last photo. Little did she know, she used physics in her volleyball game!




This is totally unrelated to volleyball, but I found it interesting. Lately, I've been seeing physics everywhere...Even while I'm driving. No, not in acceleration or anything, I see it is street signs as well...
The first thing I thought of when I saw this sign was...FREE BODY DIAGRAM. If you rotate it a little, it could totally pass for one, am I right? I freaked out when I saw it, and immediately told my mom to take a picture. Okay, it's a little bit of a stretch, but trust me, from now on, when you see one of these yellow street signs, you're going to see a free body diagram. Haha.