Kenny is standing on top of a boulder at his neighborhood pond. He picks up a small rock, so that it is 7 feet off the ground, and throws the rock into the pond. The height of the rock after t seconds can be modeled by the expression -16^2 + 32t + 7. What does 7 represent in the context of the problem.

Question

Kenny is standing on top of a boulder at his neighborhood pond. He picks up a small rock, so that it is 7 feet off the ground, and throws the rock into the pond. The height of the rock after t seconds can be modeled by the expression -16^2 + 32t + 7. What does 7 represent in the context of the problem.
A. 7 does not make sense as a value in this problem.
B. 7 represents the number of seconds Kenny hold the rock before throwing it.
C. 7 represents the height of the rock when Kenny throws it.
D. 7 represents the number of rocks Kenny found at the pond.

GPT-4o mini · Answer

C. 7 represents the height of the rock when Kenny throws it.

In the context of the problem, the expression for the height of the rock is given by the quadratic function \(-16t^2 + 32t + 7\). The constant term (7) in the equation represents the initial height of the rock when it is thrown, which is 7 feet off the ground.