Real Life Projectile Motion: Peyton Manning Throws a Football From 23 Stories High

Image: Omaha Productions. Peyton Manning throwing a football from Bryant Park Hotel

What do you do when you have a bunch of money to just do fun stuff and record it? Well, one option would be to recreate a 1920’s football stunt — but this time use Peyton Manning and Chris Carter. The idea is to throw a football off a 23 story tall building down to a receiver in the park below. Yup, that’s what they did. You can check out the full video here.

Sure, it might be a fun video — but more importantly, it’s a great physics problem. Even better, it’s a physics problem with layers — like an onion or a ogre. Let’s start with the outer layer assuming no air resistance. Even in that case, there are SO many questions to ask:

• How high above the ground did Peyton actually throw the ball? They don’t explicitly state that.
• Could a normal human make this throw so that it travels a horizontal distance of 85 yards (as claimed in the video).
• Is a launch angle of 45 degrees the best option for maximum distance?
• How fast was the ball traveling on…