The flight of a Paintball

Once a paintball gets into the air its flight is much like that of a golf ball. There are a verity of forces that act upon the ball once its in the air. The ball always has the force of gravity acting on it. This causes the paintball to travel in an arc and return to the earth.

When a paintball is fired it doesn't always fire such a nice arch however, there are several other factors that have to be taken into account. For one there is a drag force placed on the ball and the spinning of the ball put an angular acceleration onto the ball. Thus the actual flight of the paintball looks more like this:

Even with these taken into account there are several other factors that manipulate a ball once it gets into the air. For one the surface of a paintball is not always smooth or perfectly spherical, many times the surface fo the ball can be dimpled or egg shaped. Also the liquid inside of a paintball doesn't fill of the ball completely. So the liquid inside of the shell spins around and can drastically impact the flight of the ball.

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