350 year old Newton's Puzzle solved by a 16 year old

Belmit said:
He was already miles ahead of anyone else simply by believing it wasn't impossible and dismissing his youth and inexperience as limitations. Wish I'd had that kind of confidence at that age.
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I don't understand this.
Why did people think it was impossible?
There must be something missing from the description, they say calculate a trajectory, influenced by air resistance and mavity. Whats so difficult about that?
Were there unknown constants to define?
Just seems odd, exactly what did the kid come up with?
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Just seems odd, exactly what did the kid come up with?
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Here, nicked this of one of the maths forums.

  • We had an analytical solution for describing the 2D motion of a projectile whose drag was entirely linear.
  • We had an analytical solution for describing the motion of a projectile traveling ONLY horizontally and whose drag was entirely quadratic.
  • We had an analytical solution for describing the motion of a projectile traveling ONLY vertically and whose drag was entirely quadratic.
  • This student now gives us the analytical solution for solving the motion of a particle in two dimensions whose drag is entirely quadratic.
  • We do not have analytical solutions that take into account both linear drag and quadratic drag at the same time.
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If you need more look up Reynolds Number, a dimensionless number describing the ratio of quadratic to linear drag.
 
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