History Connection and Multiple Trials
History Connection: After the students have completed the activity and discussed the results the teacher or students should read about Galileo and his work with the military and the trajectories of cannon balls. Galileo was able to show the military the maximum range that cannon balls would go based upon the angle of the cannon. He discovered that with an angle of 45 degrees the object would go the farthest. Students should be able to look at thier results and compare it to that of Galileo and the cannon balls.
A brief summary of Galileo's work with maximum trajectory can be found in the following book:
Marty Lewinter and William Widulski. The Saga of Mathematics A Brief History. Prentice Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2002 pg.142.
Multiple Trials: In order for there to be consistency with the results I think that there should be multiple trials for each angle that the object is launched from so that the results can be more accurate.
