Baseball Related Rates: Milt Famey's Line Drive to Third Base Equation

User Name
Messages
19
Reaction score
0
Eh, this is sort of a simple question.

Milt Famey hits a line drive to center field. As he rounds second base, he heads directly for third base, running at 20 ft per second. Write an equation expressing.. blah blah blah.

I'm not asking to do the mathematical part. I just don't know conceptually how this would look on paper. What kind of shape would he make, because I can't picture it in my mind. Would he make a right triangle?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Are you asking what the shape of a baseball field is? If so, you can find a diagram at this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_diamond

PS: I miss those names that you find littered throughout high school Calc and physics texts. Milt Famey :smile:
 
Last edited:
There are two things I don't understand about this problem. First, when finding the nth root of a number, there should in theory be n solutions. However, the formula produces n+1 roots. Here is how. The first root is simply ##\left(r\right)^{\left(\frac{1}{n}\right)}##. Then you multiply this first root by n additional expressions given by the formula, as you go through k=0,1,...n-1. So you end up with n+1 roots, which cannot be correct. Let me illustrate what I mean. For this...
Back
Top