Projectile Motion Lab: Angle of Maximum Range

[status]

Hello, I have a couple of questions regarding a projectile motion lab I'm working on. The lab involved launching a ball from a mechanical launcher at a certain height and recording/calculating some values.

So I found that the angle of maximum range decreases as the launch height increases, but why does this happen? Also, why does increasing launch speed increase angle of max range?

I appreciate the help.

 

[Born2bwire]

How comprehensive were your trials? Did you, say for example, use a constant launch speed and then gradually increase the angle from 0 to 90 degrees taking regular sets of measurements?

The obvious thing to do here is to do the theoretical work to compare to your experimental data. Do you know how to find the equations for the path of motion of your projectile? Doing so would answer your questions.

 

[Naty1]

The basic math is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile_motion

A key to understanding these is to think about the separate motion
in the horizontal and vertical directions.