Problema Solution

The International Space Agency has landed a robotic explorer on a planet. The robot launches a baseball directly upward at 147 ft/s. The equation for the path of the baseball is: h = -149t^2 + 147t, where h is the height of the baseball in feet and t is time in seconds. Assuming no wind, how long will it take for the ball to land on the surface?

Answer provided by our tutors

The ball lands on the surface when h = 0 for some t > 0:

Since h = -149t^2 + 147t we need to solve and find the positive roots for the quadratic equation:

-149t^2 + 147t = 0

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click here to see the equation solved for t

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t = 0.9866 s

The ball will land of the surface after 0.9866 seconds.