Does anyone know the equation to get the current x position and the current y position of a projectile with gravity and mass figured in? The object is fired horizontally from a given height h, with initial velocity v.
The trajectory will be a parabola. If you're fire the projectile horizontally (i.e. in positive x direction) at height y0, then you're entering the parabola at its vertex, for which I'll use coordinates (x0, y0). Ignoring friction, the horizontal component of your velocity will always equal the initial velocity, whereas the vertical velocity will increrase linearily with time. Intergrating that gives you the position for a given time t as:
In the second equation, g denotes the gravitational acceleration of 9.81 m/s2. Unless you consider friction, the mass of the object has no impact at all, as the higher gravitational force is compensated by the greater inertia. The equations obviously assume that positive y is up, and the gravity pulls down.