On Mars, if you hit a baseball, the height of the ball at time "t" would be modelled by the quadratic function h=-1.85t^2+20t+1, where t is in seconds and h is in metres. When will the ball hit the ground?
Given that the height of the baseball is modeled by the equation: h(t)=-1.85t^2+20t+1 where t is time in seconds and h is the height in meters The time taken for the ball to hit the ground will be found as follows; at the point when the ball hits the ground, h(t)=0, therefore our equation will be: -1.85t^2+20t+1=0 solving the above quadratic equation for t we get: t=[-b+/-sqrt(b^2-4ac)]/(2a) substituting the values into the above formula we get: t=[-20+\-sqrt(20^2+7.4)]/(-3.7) t=-0.049771 or t=10.8606 but since there is no negative time values we shall select: t=10.8606 hence, we conclude that the time taken for the ball to hit the ground was: t=10.8606 seconds
