The jerk and the vertical fall of a shuttlecock

Autor: Nina Reistad
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: European Journal of Physics. 43:055804
ISSN: 1361-6404
0143-0807
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6404/ac8320
Popis: Jerk, the derivative of acceleration with respect to time, is a physical concept of great practical significance. However, this concept is rarely mentioned in textbooks and is often neglected in physics education. This paper describes how the concept of jerk can be easily introduced in the study of the dynamics of falling bodies, which are significantly affected by air resistance. In this regard, the vertical fall of two different feather shuttlecocks, a standard and a miniature one, is studied. In this simple vertical fall experiment, air resistance is significant and measurable, implying that the acceleration changes, and thus, the jerk can be determined. The velocity, acceleration, and jerk measurements with time during the vertical fall are described and compared with those from different standard air resistance models. The proposed setup can help initiate a discussion of well-known basic physics concepts and modeling approaches, such as displacement, velocity, acceleration, and particularly the often-neglected jerk concept.
Databáze: OpenAIRE