Find velocity required to reach a certain height given only height and gravity

haiku11
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On the surface of the sun the acceleration due to gravity is approx 0.25km/s². A mass of gas forming a solar prominence rises from the sun's surface. If only gravity is considered, what must its initial upward velocity be, if it is to reach a height of 24000km above the surface?

I can't figure out how to do this, I have:
a(t) = 0.25 the integral would give me:
v(t) = 0.25t + C the integral of this would give me:
s(t) = 0.125t² + Ct + D

I'm assuming D would be 0 because that's where the prominence starts on the ground so the equation becomes:
24000 = 0.125t² + Ct
0 = 0.125t² + Ct - 24000

I don't know where to go from here because there are 2 variables and I can't do any substitution using the previous equations. Trying to use the quadratic formula made everything really messy when trying to rearrange it in terms of "t". I even tried doing this the physics way although this is a calculus problem and I still couldn't do it with the 5th motion equation because I would be trying to take the square root of a negative. But if I ignore the negative and take the root I get the approximately right answer of around 109km/s.
 
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haiku11 said:
On the surface of the sun the acceleration due to gravity is approx 0.25km/s². A mass of gas forming a solar prominence rises from the sun's surface. If only gravity is considered, what must its initial upward velocity be, if it is to reach a height of 24000km above the surface?

I can't figure out how to do this, I have:
a(t) = 0.25 the integral would give me:
v(t) = 0.25t + C the integral of this would give me:
s(t) = 0.125t² + Ct + D

I'm assuming D would be 0 because that's where the prominence starts on the ground so the equation becomes:
24000 = 0.125t² + Ct
0 = 0.125t² + Ct - 24000

I don't know where to go from here because there are 2 variables and I can't do any substitution using the previous equations. Trying to use the quadratic formula made everything really messy when trying to rearrange it in terms of "t". I even tried doing this the physics way although this is a calculus problem and I still couldn't do it with the 5th motion equation because I would be trying to take the square root of a negative. But if I ignore the negative and take the root I get the approximately right answer of around 109km/s.

If you are taking s positive upward, your acceleration should be towards the sun, therefore negative. Also, as another hint, what do you know about the velocity when it is at maximum height of 24000?
 
Darn it I forgot the acceleration is negative in this case, this changes everything. Thanks.
 
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...
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