Modeling the Motion of a Volleyball with Spin

Though a qualitative understanding of how spin affects a ball’s trajectory canbe easily developed, a quantitative one is relatively difficult to hone. Additionally, although projectile motion is an extensively covered topic in introductory physics courses, friction and drag—let alone spin—receive little to no attention. Here we use a volleyball and video modeling software to compare the behavior of a non-spinning ball with one that has topspin in order to assess the accuracy of our various modelsincorporating drag and the Magnus effect