Physics as it relates to different aspects of Racquetball The Serve A racquetball set begins with the serve. The ball is hit by the racket causing the ball to accelerate. This acceleration is caused by the force exerted on the ball by the racket. The force can be explained by newton’s second law F=ma where the acceleration is equal to the force divided by the mass. As the force exerted on the racket by your hand causes the racket to accelerate forward this force is transferred upon contact to the ball which has a much smaller mass and is consequentially accelerated forward at a much greater rate. the forward movement of the ball can then be further explained by the conservation of momentum theorem as momentum is equal to the product of the mass and velocity and momentum of a system is conserved or momentum in, is equal to the momentum out in a system. if we consider the system to by the racket the player and the ball we can see that momentum of the racket and person are transferred into the ball which has a much smaller mass causing the ball to accelerate to a much greater velocity.   The Balls flight   To consider the ball as it fly’s through the air it is helpful to consider the forces acting on the ball as it travels through the air. the two forces are drag caused by the objects motion through the air and gravity caused by the mass of the earth. the drag force acts opposite the balls motion through the air, and is the force that causes the ball to lose some of its momentum throughout its flight the loss in momentum is quite small due to the small surface area of the ball and the short amount of time it is in the air. The second force gravity has a much larger effect on the play of the game as without gravity the sport would be unplayable as there would be no reason or force acting on the ball to cause it to return to the ground to cause the ball to return to the ground for the first and second bounces.   The Balls impact The balls impact with the wall is an example of Newton’s third law of action reaction forces. As the ball collides with the wall the ball exerts a force on the wall causing the wall to accelerate and the wall exerts an on equal and opposite force on the ball causing the ball to accelerate. You may be thinking now that this is incorrect that the wall doesn’t accelerate the wall is still there it hasn’t gone anywhere, this is due to how much greater the mass of the wall is compared to the mass of the ball as the ball and wall encounter the same magnitude of force. from newton’s second law F=ma or a= F/m  we can see that that the force equal to that on the ball exerted on the much more massive wall causes a much smaller acceleration in this case such as small acceleration that we cannot even discern the walls movement. The balls impact with the wall is an example of an elastic collision as the ball bounces away from the wall with a different velocity than the wall Stragety  The strategy as it relates to the physics of racquetball has to due with where you direct the ball and how much power you put into the swing. in order to give the opponent the least amount of time to return a hit you want to place the ball either as far away from the opponent as possible or as low to the ground as possible. You can place the ball as allow to the ground as possible by either directing it towards the bottom of the front wall or by the amount of force you impart on the wall. The only force's acting on the ball in flight that affect its direction are the force from the racket and the force of gravity. As you hit the ball with less force it has less acceleration leading to a longer length of time it is in the air as gravity is the force pushing the ball towards the ground the longer the ball is in the air the more gravity will change its direction of motion by  putting less force into the swing you allow gravity to bring the ball lower to the ground. So a hit with less force will go closer to the bottom of the front wall.