Explanation:
a) The height of the ball h with respect to the reference line is

so its initial gravitational potential energy
is



b) To find the speed of the ball at the reference point, let's use the conservation law of energy:

We know that the initial kinetic energy
as well as its final gravitational potential energy
are zero so we can write the conservation law as

Note that the mass gets cancelled out and then we solve for the velocity v as



I believe the answer is manipulation of information. Hope I helped!
Potential Energy = mass x gravitational acceleration x height
potential Energy = 1 x 9.8 x 10 = 98 joules
Yes, parallax affects the precision of a measurement that you make. It introduces an error in the order of the parallax. It will cause the measurement to be different from the real answer. Hope this answers the question. Have a nice day.