Volleyball Attacking

This past summer, my club volleyball team competed in the USAV Junior National Championships in Austin, Texas. Volleyball, like every other sport, provides a ton of examples of physics at work. Attacking, which is comprised of the setter setting the ball and the attacker hitting it, is one area where it is easy to see physics at work:

When the setter (15) sets the ball, it leaves his hands at an initial velocity, and the moment it leaves his hands it is in free fall. Thus, the ball is going to travel upward, accelerating at a rate of -9.8 m/s squared, reach a peak, and then travel downward, accelerating at a rate of 9.8 m/s squared. It's the attacker's job to hit the ball as close to the peak as possible:

Here the ball is going to leave the hand of the attacker (13, me) at an initial velocity and then decelerate (or have negative acceleration) due to air resistance and move downward (not upward first, since the trajectory is already downward) due to the constant pull of gravity:

During all of this, the actual jumping also demonstrates physics (as we learned in our lab last week). The body is in free fall from the moment it leaves the ground, which results in a symmetrical, parabolic position vs. time graph, just like a volleyball that has been set. In the video linked below, the first clip shows the effect of gravity on jumping; the second clip shows the effect of gravity on setting; and the last clip is just there because Clint has a RIDICULOUS save:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3le-5S6OL7Q

Thus, it is easy to recognize the concepts of physics that are demonstrated in this aspect of volleyball.