A study for determining the launch angle that maximises the totaldistance travelled by the projectile during its flight in the projectilemotion

In this study, the relationship between the total distance traveled by theprojectile during its flight in the projectile motion and the launch angle for afixed initial speed was investigated. Assuming that the effect of air resistanceis neglected and the free fall acceleration is constant throughout the range ofmotion, among all possible launch angles for a fixed initial speed, it isnoticed that there is a unique launch angle,θ0,max which allows thetotal distance to be the longest. Thus, theθ0,max value has beendetermined to be about 56.5° using a simple mathematical method thatstudents can easily apply.