Let's begin by considering the problem of visualizing the differences between
the heights reached by balls thrown with the same initial velocity but with
different initial angles.
One simple way to do this is to put more than one curve on the same plot. For
example, suppose we'd like to look at balls thrown at angles of 60, 45, and 30
degrees. We'll use an initial velocity of 50 meters/sec for each of them.
| plot({height(50, Pi/3, `time (sec)`),
height(50, Pi/4, `time (sec)`),
height(50, Pi/6, `time (sec)`)},
`time (sec)`=0..10,
`height (meters)`=0..200); |
As you can see, to produce more than one graph on the same plot we simply put
everything that we want plotted inside of braces.
It's a bit hard to read the plot, since Maple doesn't label the three curves
that it displays. Nevertheless, the plot reveals that as the angle at which
the ball is thrown steepens, the maximum height reached and the total time
aloft increases.
Joseph L. Zachary
Hamlet Project
Department of Computer Science
University of Utah