Projectile Motion

[Warwick]

I just started doing some problems and this basic pm problem is giving me a lot of trouble.

If a ball was throwen horizontally with 45.08 m/s, how far would the ball fall vertically by the time it reached home plate, 18.28m away?

The initial velocity is 45.08 m/s. Now that is the x and y velocity combined, correct? How do I go about finding the x and y velocity? If I don't need to do it for this particular problem could you explain how to do it anyway and how to solve the problem. I tried using arc-cos to find the initial angle then find the velocities from there but I don't think that's right.

Thanks for reading. :smile:

[Nylex]

If it's thrown horizontally, the vertical component of its initial velocity is 0. Since there aren't any forces acting on the ball horizontally (ignoring air resistance), it travels at a constant velocity. You can then work out the time taken to travel 18.28 m (t = x/v). What you want to do is find out the distance the ball falls in this time. Use the equation s = ut + (1/2)at^2 (using a = g, u = 0 as explained above and t as the time you've calculated).