Chapter 3, Problem 74AP

A truck loaded with cannonball watermelons stops suddenly to avoid running over the edge of a washed-out bridge (Fig. P3.74). The quick stop causes a number of melons to fly off the truck. One melon rolls over the edge with an initial speed υ_i = 10.0 m/s in the horizontal direction. A cross section of the bank has the shape of the bottom half of a parabola with its vertex at the edge of the road, and with the equation y² = (16.0 m) x, where x and y are measured in meters. What are the x- and y-coordinates of the melon when it splatters on the bank?

Figure P3.74 The blue dashed curve shows the parabolic shape of the bank.