3. ORNITHOLOGY Many birds drop shellfish onto
rocks to break the shell and get to the food inside.
Crows along the west coast of Canada use this technique
to eat whelks (a type of sea snail). Suppose a crow drops
a whelk from a height of 20 feet, as shown.
Source: Cambridge Encyclopedia of Ornithology
a. Write an equation giving the whelk's height h
(in feet) after / seconds.
20 ft
b. Use the Table feature of a graphing calculator to find
h when r=0.0.1.0.2, 0.3. 1.4. 1.5. (You'll need
to scroll down the table to see all the values.) To the
nearest tenth of a second, how long does it take for
the whelk to hit the ground? Check your answer by
solving a quadratic equation.