17 May
2017
17 May
'17
9:40 p.m.
Didn't some young kid recently find a closed-form solution for the cannonball-in-the-atmosphere problem? At 05:45 PM 5/17/2017, Bill Gosper wrote:
Everybody knows that, in vacuo, 45º elevation maximizes projectile range. Trick question: Given our atmosphere, is the range maximized by > or < 45º? SPOILER. Baseball: <. Cannonball: >. Well, long long distance artillery anyway. The idea is to fly above the denser, low level atmosphere. This raises the interesting question: Are there projectile densities and energies for which the range improves for elevations both > and < 45º? --rwg