The English Galileo and His Vision of Projectile Motion under Air Resistance

Abstract

This article presents a detailed discussion of the shape of the trajectory traced by a projectile under the forces of gravity and air resistance. In particular, our results confirm the insight of the English scientist Thomas Harriot into the motion of a projectile before the development of Newtonian classical mechanics. Our approach is based on the fact that the flight path of a resisted projectile is implemented by a strictly concave function for which the derivative is also strictly concave.