This week Zichao Zhou (Year 12) managed to hit the target in the Monkey Hunter experiment during Dr. Farrelly’s Physics class.

As the ball bearing leaves the blowpipe, it breaks a circuit, causing the tennis ball to fall at the same time. Since both ball and ball bearing fall at the same time with the same acceleration, g, the ball bearing should hit the tennis ball.

In practice, the tennis ball sometimes falls a little later, the pipe moves, there is some air resistance or a little air movement, etc. but sometimes, like this time…it worked!