Question

Assume that a catcher in a professional baseball game catches a ball that has been pitched with an initial velocity of 45.2 m/s to the southeast. If the catcher uniformly brings the ball to rest in 0.0084 s through a distance of 0.02 m to the southeast, what is the ball's acceleration?

Answer 1

The ball's acceleration is -5400 m/s² to the southeast.

Step-by-step explanation:

To find the ball's acceleration, we can use the equation:

acceleration = (final velocity - initial velocity) / time

In this case, the initial velocity is 45.2 m/s, the final velocity is 0 m/s (since the ball comes to rest), and the time is 0.0084 s.

So, the acceleration is:

acceleration = (0 - 45.2) / 0.0084 = -5400 m/s²

The negative sign indicates that the acceleration is in the opposite direction of the initial velocity, to the southeast.