If you stand at the edge of a cliff that is 75 m high and throw a rock directly up into the air with a velocity of 20 m/s, at what time will the rock hit the ground? (note: the quadratic formula will give two answers, but only one of them is reasonable.)

The vertical position of the rock is given by:

where

h=75 m is the initial height

v0=20 m/s is the initial vertical velocity

g=9.81 m/s^2 is the acceleration due to gravity

The problem asks to find the time t at which the rock hits the ground, so the time t at which y(t)=0, so the equation above becomes:

Which has two solutions:

t=-2.37 s

t=6.45 s

The first solution is a negative time so it has no physical meaning, therefore the correct answer is t=6.45 s.