How Do You Calculate the Maximum Height of a Projectile Shot Upwards?

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A projectile is shot straight up from the Earth's surface at a speed of 6000 km/hr.How high does it go?

i started out by converting km/hr to m/s

so i got 6000km/hr= 1666.666666m/s

then i used this formula:

v^2=2gy

and i got:
y= 141723 m= 141.723km (i just got lucky that my answer was close)

the correct answer wass 145 km

how do you get 145? can someone please help? thanks!
 
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A projectile is shot straight up from the Earth's surface at a speed of 6000 km/hr.How high does it go?

6000km/hr= 1666.666666m/s

So.. there's only 1 direction for velocity, the y-direction.

[tex]y = V_i t + \frac{1/2} a_g t^2[/tex]
and
[tex]V_f = V_i + a_g t[/tex]

So it's a simple kinematics problem with a kick in it if I'm doing it correctly..

So I proceed to find t=170 seconds.. Plug it in and I get 141780 meters or 141.780 km... My god O_o

My problem is that if we were talking about gravitational acceleration past the Earth, we would be given the height but... Well.. yeah O_o

It might be that they rounded... *shrugs* See if anyone else gets a better idea.
 
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can anyone else help please? I am positive that i did it wrong and just got lucky
 
nick727kcin said:
can anyone else help please? I am positive that i did it wrong and just got lucky

Have you covered [itex]F= { G m M \over r^2 }[/itex] ? It seems to me that at that speed, you would have to take into account the change o fthe gravitational force with distance.
 
nick727kcin said:
can anyone else help please? I am positive that i did it wrong and just got lucky

I get 145 km using for gravitational potential enegry [itex]-G m M / r[/itex].

Pat