Question

The height, in feet, that a rock is dropped from the top of a building is modeled by the quadratic function y = −16x2 + 144, where x is time, in seconds. What does 144 represent for the quadratic function?

Answer 1

144 is the y-intercept in the equation. In the function, it represents the height that the rock was dropped from the top of the building.

Answer 2

144 is the y-intercept of the graph. It represents the hight the rock was dropped from. In this case the rock was dropped 144 feet above ground.