SS Connection

String theory developed over several decades through the combined efforts of multiple scientists; no one scientist invented it. However, in 1943, Werner Heisenberg started the original research program that led to the development of the theory. After many different, prominent theorists advocated the string theory, it disappeared due to foreign, or in other words, unknown mathematical methods. After researchers brought the subject up again, they started to notice the depth that the String Theory had behind it.

A projectile is any object that once projected or dropped, continues in motion by its own inertia and is influenced only by the downward force of gravity. In Aristotle's hypothesis of motion, projectiles were transmitted through the air by an external force. His later successors theorized that this force was actually in the projectile itself, they called this the "impetus". They believed that the impetus caused the projectile object to soar in a straight direction until it dissipated, at which point it would fall straight to the ground. While these objects seem to behave in this manner, others found out that they do not behave in this manner. The study of projectile motion had become more important when the use of the cannon became more common in the act of warfare, so with more observation, the people studying projectiles came to the realization that Aristotle and his followers were indeed, wrong. So now the world of physics needed somebody to come up with a way to measure projectiles, and figure out how they really work. Galileo provided a curved piece at the bottom of an inclined plane that was set on a table, that piece deflected and inked ball in a horizontal direction. After the ball was launched in the horizontal direction, it would roll off of the table and leave a mark on the floor. The mark that is left on the floor was able to give Galileo the vertical and horizontal distances traveled by the ball.

A page from Galileo's notebooks, showing an experiment such as the one described here. See Stillman Drake, Galileo's Notes on Motion, monograph 5, Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza (Florence, 1979), p. 79.

Take a basketball for instance, it is considered a projectile, mainly when you are going through the motion of a free-throw. We know that a projectile is any object fired, thrown, or otherwise propelled. A basketball relates to a projectile as the force exerted upon the basketball is a push. The basketball is then projected horizontally and vertically, causing, if the proper shooting technique is applied, the basketball to rotate, elevate, and finally swish through the net. The horizontal and vertical components are both independent, and there for do not effect each other. The arch caused by the basketball is a result of the gravitational pull upon the basketball, and if a basketball was thrown without a gravitational pull acting upon it, the basketball would travel continuously without arching (this also relates to Newton's 1st law). Therefore, playing basketball in space would be an absurdity.