Question

As soon as a bowling ball rolls off the edge of a table its horizontal component of velocity

A) increases.
B) remains constant
C) decreases.

Answer 1

B) Remains constant

Step-by-step explanation:

The motion of the ball is the motion of a projectile, which consists of two separate motions:

- A horizontal motion with constant velocity, since there are no forces acting along the horizontal direction (if we neglect air resistance)

- A vertical motion with constant acceleration, due to the presence of the force of gravity (pointing downward), that accelerates the ball towards the ground with acceleration g=9.8 m/s^2.

We are only interested in the horizontal motion of the ball: we said that there are no forces acting along the horizontal direction, therefore the horizontal component of the the velocity of the ball is constant.