There are always a number of forces at play in the sport of volleyball, primarily in serving and spiking. The net force on the ball equals its mass, 0.27kg, times the acceleration produced by the player. The whole premise of volleyball is to try and strategically place the ball into the other teams court, while defending it from landing it into your own. The best way to do this is to catch the other team off guard by “attacking” or “spiking” the ball quickly enough into their court so the other team does not have a chance to react. To accomplish this the attacker must apply a large amount of downward force to the ball with his hand so that if there is no block in front of him/her it will be extremely difficult to defend. Below is an example of me doing this:
Solving for force (newton's law #2)
So lets try and determine how much force it would take Malik to spike a ball down into the ground 6 m away from him at a velocity of 20m/s, assuming the ball takes 0.2 sec to hit the ground. Since we have velocity and a time we can now solve for the balls acceleration using the equation a = (delta)V/(delta)T
a=20m/s/0.2s
a=100
Now that I have the acceleration and mass of the ball, I will plug it into the equation Fnet=ma so I can solve for my total force.
Fnet=(0.27kg)(100m/s^2)
Fnet = 27
Therefore the total force acting upon the volleyball is 27 joules.
Solving for my applied force in this situation is simple because the ball is travelling so fast, and for such a short period of time we can assume there is no air resistance. OR no friction acting against the ball, because Fnet=Fa + Ff this means that Fnet=Fa, so the applied force is in fact the only force on the ball meaning our applied force would be 26 joules of energy.
Bonus: explain the action + Reaction forces in the following scenarios
A ball is hit, and the opposing team digs the ball up into the air.
The ball makes contact with an attackers hand and is travelling downwards onto the opponents court. After the ball is hit and has made contact with the players platform it rebounds off in the opposite direction causing it to to travel straight up into the air
An attacker hits the ball with a lot of force and gets blocked straight down
The ball is travelling quickly after being launched from the attackers hand, Because the ball has been hit with a great force it is travelling at a high speed, so when it comes in contact with the blockers hands it bounces off straight down
Newton's Law #1
Newtons First Law states that an object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. This law relates directly to the defense side of volleyball, more specifically blocking. When an opposing team sets up a block, the purpose is to stop the ball in its path from travelling onto their court. When the ball hits off of the block an applied force is created but in the opposite direction, forcing the ball to go backwards and ideally land into the offensive teams court.
newton's law #2
Second Law states that the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to, and in the same direction as the net force acting on the object, and inversely proportional to its mass. This means that F = ma, F being the net force, m being the mass, and a being the acceleration. This law relates to volleyball in a number of ways but most clearly when hitting or serving the ball, because you already know the mass of the ball, if you can figure out its acceleration than you can easily find the net force acting upon the ball.
newton's law #3
Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction force, this law relates directly to the athlete. This is because the more force a person applies to the ground the higher they will travel when jumping, when they exert a high level force upon the ground using their legs, a high level of force will be exerted back onto them from the ground launching them into the air. This is something important for athletes in general to know if they would like to increase their vertical.