Question 1 of 5
A landscaper models the height, in feet, of a ball tossed upward at a work site by the function , where is the time in seconds after the ball is thrown. According to the model, what is the height of the ball when it reaches its maximum height?
Explanation
For a quadratic function in the form , the maximum occurs at . Here, and , so
Now evaluate the height at :
So the ball reaches a maximum height of feet.
Concept summary
For a downward-opening quadratic, the maximum value is the function's value at the vertex. Use , then substitute that time into the function.