Atwood Machine Physics Problem Novels & Stories

Why are you looking at his hands right now, Summer. Stop looking at his hands. "So if the initial velocity is at an angle," I said, with great professionalism, "you have to resolve it into horizontal and vertical components separately. You can't treat it as one thing. They behave differently." "Why?" "Because gravity only acts vertically. Horizontally there's no acceleration, the horizontal velocity stays constant the whole time." He looked at the diagram. "So they're the same object but you treat them like two separate problems." "Exactly." He was quiet for a moment. Then: "That's actually logical."