Projectile motion

Question

How would the time of flight the range an the maximum height of an object exhibiting projectile motion change if
A) only the vertical component of its initial velocity is increased?
B) only the horizontal component of its initial velocity is increased?

Answer 1

For projectile motion, we always think of breaking velocity into the vertical and horizontal components. That's because gravity only affects the vertical velocity because it's pulling things down. What dictates the maximum height is really the initial vertical velocity. Given that let's look at the questions:

 

A) So if the vertical velocity is increased, it would go higher. This should make sense, intuitively.

B) The horizontal velocity only affects how far it travels horizontally, but it doesn't affect how long the object is in the air. So there would be no change in the maximum height.