Question

Someone please help me with this!!!

Ray and Kelsey have summer internships at an engineering firm. As part of their internship, they get to assist in the planning of a brand new roller coaster. For this assignment, you help Ray and Kelsey as they tackle the math behind some simple curves in the coaster's track.

Part A

The first part of Ray and Kelsey's roller coaster is a curved pattern that can be represented by a polynomial function.

Ray and Kelsey are working to graph a third-degree polynomial function that represents the first pattern in the coaster plan. Ray says the third-degree polynomial has 4 intercepts. Kelsey argues the function can have as many as 3 zeros only. Is there a way for the both of them to be correct? Explain your answer.


Kelsey has a list of possible functions. Pick one of the g(x) functions below and then describe to Kelsey the key features of g(x), including the end behavior, y-intercept, and zeros.
g(x) = x3 − x2 − 4x + 4
g(x) = x3 + 2x2 − 9x − 18
g(x) = x3 − 3x2 − 4x + 12
g(x) = x3 + 2x2 − 25x − 50
g(x) = 2x3 + 14x2 − 2x − 14

Answer 1

the y-intercept is the constant term

the end behavior is y->∞ or y-> -∞, as with all polynomials.

the only other features of interest are the x-intercepts. A little synthetic division will reveal those.

Answer 2

You should already solved this by now