Question

On a baseball field, the pitcher's mound is 60.5 feet from home plate. During practice, a batter hits a ball 214 feet at an

angle of 36° to the right of the pitcher's mound. An outfielder catches the ball and throws it to the pitcher. Approximately
how far does the outfielder throw the ball?

Answer 1

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Answer:

169 ft

Explanation:

The law of cosines can be used to find the distance from the outfielder to the pitcher. It tells you for triangle ABC, the length of side c can be found from ...

c² = a² +b² -2ab·cos(C)

Here, we hve a=60.5, b=214, and C=36°. Then the desired distance is ...

c = √(60.5² +214² -2·60.5·214·cos(36°)) ≈ √28507.56 ≈ 168.84

The outfielder throws the ball about 169 feet.