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The Math in the Game of Volleyball Essay

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Math in Volleyball
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Institution Math in Volleyball
A good service in volleyball is important to a winning strategy. Either an effective serve will not be returned, leading to a point, or it will be returned with minimal strength, providing the serving team with the advantage. One aim of a good serve is to provide the receivers with little time as possible to react. Forces and angles are the two main factors at play when relating volleyball with math (Papageōrgiou & Spitzley, 2003). In short, in order to relate volleyball with math, the force needed to make the ball move a certain height or distance, the angle required to make the ball over the net, and the arrangement of players, such that less players cover more ground need to be …show more content…

This is possible because a spinning ball follows a curved trajectory whereas a non-spinning ball does not.
In the forthcoming models, x will be used to represent the horizontal distance the ball travels and y will denote the height of the ball. Therefore, the initial conditions of the server will be yo = h and xo = 0, where h represents the height from which the ball is served. ||vo|| will represent the initial hitting speed, and θ will denote the initial angle relative to the ground. The angle ϕ will be the cross-court angle with respect to the sideline, such that a straight hit across the net has ϕ equivalent to 0. dT will form the total distance of flight and the distance to the net will be dN. The angular velocity of the ball will be represented by ω. Gravity
Formulating the First Model
The first model to be formulated assumes that only gravity affects the ball. From Newton’s law, the magnitude of this force due to gravity is mg along the negative direction, where g is the acceleration due to gravity (g = 32.174 ft/sec2) and m is the mass of the ball (Lithio & Webb, 2006). Since no force acts along the x-direction, the force equations become:
Fx = 0
Fy = -mg
Due to lack of a horizontal force acting on the ball, it will move with constant velocity in the x-direction just from the time it is hit until it lands. Solving the First Model
Because the ball

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