Question

A soccer ball is kicked toward the goal. The height of the ball is modeled by the function h(t) = −16t2 + 48t where t equals the time in seconds and h(t) represents the height of the ball at time t seconds. What is the axis of symmetry, and what does it represent?

Answer 1

1.5 - it represents the time in seconds where the ball is highest

Explanation:

There are 2 methods of approaching this.

The first method involves graphing, simply place into a graphing calculator and view the vertex. The horizontal line coming down from the vertex is the axis of symmetry (it splits the parabola in half).

The second method is finding the axis of symmetry (vertex) algebraically.

-b/2a is the equation used to find the x term of the vertex, and if we were to substitute our values in, we'd get -48/-32, giving us 1.5