document.write( "Question 624248: please help
\n" ); document.write( "it says use s = 16t2
\n" ); document.write( "El Capitan in Yosemite National Park is 3593 ft high. How long would it take a carabiner to fall freely from the top? \n" ); document.write( "

Algebra.Com's Answer #392603 by solver91311(24713) $\"\"$ $\"About$

You can put this solution on YOUR website!
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\n" ); document.write( "\n" ); document.write( "Wrong. When dealing with acceleration, velocity, and displacement in the vertical, postive is UP and negative is DOWN. Since acceleration due to gravity is toward the center of the Earth, i.e. DOWN from our point of view, it must always be a negative quantity. Furthermore, just using

is also incorrect. By convention, the base of the mountain, or ground level is defined by

, so if the carabiner is already at the top of the cliff face, then we have to account for initial height. Generally speaking you would also have to account for initial velocity, the displacement over time due to initial velocity being given by

. Hence the displacement function with respect to time for vertical motion near the surface of planet Earth is:\r
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\n" ); document.write( "\n" ); document.write( "Where

is time in seconds,

is initial velocity measured in feet per second, and

is initial displacement in feet (height).\r
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\n" ); document.write( "\n" ); document.write( "For your situation, you are given that

and

feet. You are asked to solve for the postive value of

when

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\n" ); document.write( "\n" ); document.write( "Plug in your values:\r
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\n" ); document.write( "\n" ); document.write( "Solve the quadratic for

. Discard the negative root since you don't care what happened BEFORE you dropped the carabiner.\r
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\n" ); document.write( "\n" ); document.write( "By the way, the proper way to indicate raising to a power in plain text is to use the caret mark (Shift-6), thus: t^2 means

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\n" ); document.write( "\n" ); document.write( "John
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\n" ); document.write( "My calculator said it, I believe it, that settles it
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$\"The$

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