Problem 1: A baseball pitcher throws a 30 m/s fastball toward the batter, 20 meters away.

The
batter hits a line drive right over the pitcher's head into center field. The fielder stops the ball 2
seconds after it is hit, 80 meters from home plate. He hesistates for 2 seconds and then throws the
ball at 18 m/s to the second baseman, who catches the ball 2.2 seconds later.

Problem 1 Solution:
a) How long does it take for the ball to travel to home plate?
At 30 meters per second it will take less than one second for the ball to reach the plate.
change in position = average velocity x time
time = (change in position) / velocity = (20 meters) / (30 m/s) = 2/3 second

b) Find the ball's average velocity on its trip from the batter to the outfielder.
Average velocity = (change in position) / (change in time) = (80 meters) / (2 seconds) = 40 m/s

c) Find the distance from outfielder to second base.

change in position = average velocity x time = 18 m/s x 2.2 s = 40 m

d,e,f) Describe the motion of the baseball with a quantitative position-time graph, a quantitative
velocity-time graph and a qualitative motion map.

Since the time intervals in the problem sometimes have fractions of a second, the motion map
below is only approximately one second between images of the ball.