It does, but I also said that the mass only effects the required force, the part you quoted was turning a bit of a blind eye to that - the fact air resistance causes a force is pretty meaningless in a theoretical (and tedius) sense - between the ball hitting each particle of air the mass would have no effect on the speed, direction, or path. A force causing balls of different masses to decelerate at different rates is not contrary to what I intially stated - indeed it is Newton's 2nd law.

Essentially, air resistance is a force and so mass would effect that. I said that.

The mass of the player is thoroughly irrelevant. If, for example, the player dropped the ball vertically as he ran forward, the ball would have gained its forward velocity due to the initial force required to accelerate the player (and ball) to that velocity. Once at that velocity it will maintain it forever unless other forces are applied.

I'm in post-coital internet mode. As in, she's up earlier than me so she's asleep.


I'm educated. I can count to 120 before I finish, roll over and go to sleep.

That's quite impressive! I get bored after about 22

Not true, I actually changed my wording so that that would not be the case - "mass would only effect the required force to get it to that speed and in that direction".

Just because I didn't make clear what was applying the force doesn't change the fact I didn't exclude air resistance.

Can you work out the path of the ball then (other forces acting on it like air resistance and gravity) using trigonometry then?

i.e. If a static player passes a ball backwards at a 45degree angle at 10m/s, then using trigonometry it's velocity in a directly backwards direction is 7m/s.

If then a second player makes the exact same pass but is running forwards at 10m/s, then it would travel forward at 3m/s? (10m/s forwards - 7m/s backwards = 3m/s forwards).

Using Newtonian physics you can, yes.

To your example, then yes, the ball would travel forward at approximately 3m/s. At such slow speeds air resistance wouldn't have too much of an effect anyway.