Assignment 4

In this assignment, you will try to find an approximate solution to a free fall problem.
A 0.1 kg object falls from a 50 m height with no initial velocity (vi = 0). The equation of motion
therefore the trajectory of this object can be calculated easily using kinematic equations. Our
goal is to get an approximate numerical solution.
We will use Newtons second law of motion:
Then for discrete time intervals
We can use the equation above to update the velocity of the object after a small period of time

The average velocity during this time interval can be calculated as:
Using average velocity we can calculate the new position of the falling object as

Use t = 0.1s and t = 0.01s for your code.

You need to store the time and velocity and the position of the object into a file. We have gone
over how to create a file and write data in the file last Tuesday (see lecture notes). Create two
different files for t = 0.1s and t = 0.01s. Using gnuplot (or another plotting software) plot
position as a function of time for both cases.
Remember your program needs to stop updating the position of the object when it hits the ground
(in other words when Y gets zero or negative).
As always, you may come up with your own ideas to extend the program.