Image taken from http://www.isb.ac.th/HS/JoP/vol2iss2/Papers/Paintball.pdf                                                               Image taken from  http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31ZUrNs4czL._SL500_AA280_.jpg                                                                     

When a paintball is fired from the marker a number of forces are taken into account. When the paintball is traveling in the air there are only two forces acting on it during travel. Forces acted during travel are the only ones in which I will be focusing on, and those are the force of drag behind the paintball acting against the path of travel as shown in the above diagram, as well as the downward force of gravity.

Take into consideration Newton's first law: An object in motion stays in motion unless an outside force acts on it. With years of paintball experience, many aspects of  the balls' travel path have been observed while playing. Paintballs will curve, dip, drop, change direction unexpectedly, etc. which leads to the conclusions that other forces are acting on it once it has been fired from the marker. In order to understand flight travel we must look at another law of Newton's, which is the Second Law of Motion.

Newton's Second Law of Motion

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