What is a projectile? What is the general path of motion? Why?
A projectile is a moving object with gravity being the only force acting on it. If there was any other force acting on the object then it wouldn't be considered a projectile. To further understand this, we shot basketballs and tracked their movement using the video physics app. We started tracking the ball at the moment it left our hands and ended it when it touched the ground. Our basketball moved at constant speed in the x direction while accelerating in the y direction. Even though it accelerates in the y direction, the x is constant so we know that the slope is also a constant. At the balls highest point on the graph it is actually not moving. It reached its peak and now it starts to move downward.
Our free body diagram shows that the only force acting on the projectile is Fg. It doesn't matter whether a projectile is moving downwards, upwards, upwards and rightwards, or downwards and leftwards the free body diagram would look the same.
These are my graphs:
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