PHYSICS AND SPORTS: INVESTIGATING OBLIQUE PROJECTILE MOTION IN TABLE TENNIS THROUGH VIDEO ANALYSIS

Abstract

When analyzing the contemporary educational landscape, one can perceive the need to integrate new teaching approaches that combine technologies accessible to students with the sports they practice. In this context, the present work proposes an innovative study for teaching projectile motion, using the game of table tennis and the open-source software Tracker as didactic tools. Among the various sports modalities, table tennis was chosen due to its popularity and frequent practice among students at a Federal Institute campus where one of the authors teaches. This article presents a video analysis of the projectile motion of a table tennis ball, conducted using the Tracker software. As results, a local gravitational acceleration of 9.554 m/s² was obtained — a value very close to that reported in the literature — and an initial launch speed of the table tennis ball of 5.731 m/s. The estimated launch angle of the ball was approximately 16.272º. In addition to the experimental analysis, a bibliographical review was carried out to investigate the origin of table tennis, which revealed that the sport originated in England in the 19th century. It is expected that this proposal will contribute positively to the teaching of Kinematics, providing high school Physics teachers with a more effective, contextualized, and engaging teaching strategy.