A football match is being played at night in a stadium with flood lights ON. You can see the shadow of a football kept at the ground but cannot see its shadow when it is kicked high in the air. Explain.

Question

Philoid · Accepted Answer

We can see the shadow of the football lying on the ground because the ground acts as the screen, Source of light is the floodlights of the ground, and opaque object is football. Hence there are all necessary things for shadow formation so we can see the shadow of football on the ground as shown in the figure below.

When the football is kicked in the air the ground which is acting as the screen is very far away hence no shadow is formed because there is no screen on which we can see the shadow.