An EASY level 7 IB IA topic using Projectile Motion

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Here's how you take a boring IB math or physics IA topic and make it interesting. Projectile motion.

[00:00:07]Projectile motion is so overdone, but here's how you can make it a seven.

[00:00:11]So, usually if we just launch a projectile or launch any kind of object, it's the most classical and yet boring and useless topic there is because everybody's done it and there's really nothing for you to learn there. So, what I'll tell my students is use that as a stepping off point and make it more interesting. So, for example, you know that for example, for IB physics when you can use the same kind of logic and thinking and apply to a math IA, you can launch different objects that have the same mass but different volume.

[00:00:44]At the same time, you can change the volume but keep the mass the same. You can um manipulate the temperature of the launched objects and see how the temperature of the same object is affected um how air resistance affects the temperature. That would be really interesting because I've never seen that done. I mean, all you would really have to do is take an object and put it in some boiling water at different temperatures uh or different water temperatures rather. Um you can have one at room temperature and then you could keep a couple of those same items in the freezer and just monitor their temperatures. And then of course you have your error analysis there too, which is your critical thinking and reflection because the temperature that it's going to be when it's in the pot of water warming up or in freezer cold and then you take it out, it's either going to start cooling down from the hot water or it's going to start warming up from the freezer. So, there's so much you can do right there. Uh you can also manipulate the density and then launch different projectiles and see how the density affects it while keeping the shape the same for example, like the volume. And so like imagine you want to keep everything like a sphere, right?

[00:01:50]Cuz it's easy to crush everything into a ball and you could launch the same size sphere and you could have like plastic like a ping pong ball, or a golf ball, which is a lot heavier. You could take Play-Doh, you could take clay, aluminum foil, um gosh, I don't know. Could you make like make a mold of glue? Like whatever you could think of and form it into that shape and then launch it. And remember, like for example, for IB physics, and again, the same thing can be applied to math, as long as you do more than the minimum of five variations of your independent variable, that is another way to demonstrate personal engagement.

[00:02:27]And by the way, when you are trying to demonstrate personal engagement, you don't want to come out and be obvious about it, because that's going to look bad. This is how you do it while not making it obvious, but also letting the moderator know, like, "Hey, I'm going to deserve more marks in the personal engagement category." What you're going to do is say, "I wanted to collect more than the minimum number of data points because I'm so interested in this topic, so I wanted I have a strong passion and motivation to demonstrate a relationship between my X and Y variables, which is why I collected um, you know, why I did seven