Question

A bouncy ball is dropped such that the height of its first bounce is 5.5 feet and each successive bounce is 64% of the previous bounce's height. What would be the height of the 7th bounce of the ball? Round to the nearest tenth (if necessary).

Answer 1

Answer:

  0.4 ft

Step-by-step explanation:

It can be convenient to let a spreadsheet compute the values for you. Here, we have written an explicit formula for the height of the n-th bounce:

  h = 5.5×0.64^(n-1)

We have written the formula this way because we are given the height of the first bounce, not the starting height. Each bounce multiplies the height by a factor of 0.64. Then the 7th bounce will have a height of ...

  h = 5.5×0.64^6 ≈ 0.378 ≈ 0.4 . . . . feet