Question

Bill is at tennis practice. He tosses a tennis ball into the air. As the tennis ball comes back down, he decides to hit it back into the air with his racket. Bill notices that the tennis ball hits his racket m seconds after he originally tosses it. As the ball comes back down this time, he decides to catch it. When Bill catches the ball, n seconds have passed since the ball hit his racket. The height of the ball at a given time is h feet.
Which of the following functions would best model the situation given above?

absolute value

polynomial

step

cube root

Answer 1

The function that would best model the situation given above is polynomial.

That is because the vertical motion is uniformly accelerated, with acceleration equal to g ≈ 9.8 m/s^2 downward.

Therefore, the distance is modeled by d = Vo*t + g*t^2 / 2.

So, as you see it is second grade polynomial.