Question

A basketball player shoots the ball with a velocity of 17.0 ft/s at an angle of 34.1° with the horizontal. To the nearest tenth, find the magnitude of the horizontal component of the resultant vector.

Answer 1

We need to find the initial horizontal component of the vector that represents the velocity of the ball. Let us represent that initial horizontal component by,
`\bold{v_x}`.

Now, since basketball player shoots the ball with an initial velocity,
`\bold{v}`, of 17.0 ft./sec at an angle of 34.1 degrees with the horizontal, we can find the initial horizontal component by,
`\bold{v_x}` using the following formula:

`\bold{v_x}=\bold{v}\text{cos}(\theta)=17.0*\text{cos}(34.1^\circ)\thickapprox14.1` ft./sec