Physics in Archery

During archery in gym class, I'm usually one of the people who gets my hands on the nicer quality bows. But today I was sad to find myself with one of the weaker, green bows. I had never shot with one of these bows, so when I took my first shot the same way I normally would, I was surprised to find that it fell to the ground just before hitting the target. I realized that this was simple physics, and I could easily fix my shot.

The green bows have much less tension in the string than the longer wooden bows, meaning that when released, they exert less force on the arrow. So my arrow was leaving the bow with a much slower horizontal velocity than normal. Obviously, the downward acceleration wouldn't change. So all I needed to do was to aim slightly higher than where I wanted to hit on the target, so that the arrow had more distance to fall, and didn't hit the ground before reaching its destination. After realizing I just needed to shoot higher, my shots were much improved.