Answer to Question #51373 in Mechanics | Relativity for ji min lee

Question

A basketball player grabbing a rebound jumps 76 cm vertically. How much total time (ascent and descent) does the player spend (a) in the top 13 cm of this jump and (b) in the bottom 13 cm? Do your results explain why such players seem to hang in the air at the top of a jump?

Answer 1

a) we can answer the first part of this by recognizing the player rises 0.76m, reaches the apex of motion, and then falls back to the ground we can ask how
long it takes to fall 0.13 m from rest: dist = 1/2 gt^2 or t=sqrt[2d/g] t=0.175
s this is the time to fall from the top; it would take the same time to travel
upward the final 0.13 m, so the total time spent in the upper 0.15 m is 2x0.175
= 0.35s
b) there are a couple of ways of finding thetime it takes to travel the bottom 0.13m first way: we can use d=1/2gt^2 twice
to solve this problem the time it takes to fall the final 0.13 m is: time it
takes to fall 0.76 m - time it takes to fall 0.63 m t = sqrt[2d/g] = 0.399 s to
fall 0.76 m, and this equation yields it takes 0.359 s to fall 0.63 m, so it
takes 0.04 s to fall the final 0.13 m. The total time spent in the lower 0.13 m
is then twice this, or 0.08s