Today I ate breakfast/lunch at Zippy's. While eating, Kevin took my straw, which still had the wrapping on it, and shot the wrapper at me. Later on, as I was eating at my extremely slow pace, I decided to play around with the straw and wrapper. I stuck the wrapper back on the straw and blew on the straw. Of course, with my good luck, the straw flew across the restaurant into some random booth. I hid underneath the table to avoid being caught, but I don't think the people noticed.
As always, there IS physics (and a point) in my lengthy and unimportant stories. The wrapper of the straw was the projectile in this example. It flew (kinda) in a parabolic motion. The initial velocity of the wrapper depends on how hard someone blew on the straw. The harder a person blows on a straw, the faster and farther the wrapper will fly. The horizontal velocity of the wrapper remains constant, while the vertical velocity changes due to gravity’s pull (-9.8 m/s^2). The graphs of the straw would resemble #4 on this weekend's homework (but obviously different labels). However, air resistance affected the straw wrapper’s path since the projectile is so small and lightweight.
The pictures are at my house because I didn't have a camera at the restaurant. It also avoided other incidents like my straw-blowing attempt. In the first one, the projectile is at its initial velocity as it flies off the straw. The second frame shows the wrapper in flight. The shutter speed of the camera isn't very quick, so the projectile is slightly blurry.
