Practice problem

Quadratic Graph Example: y=ax²+c

+5 contributors

Contributors

Alex Federspiel
Lewis Chen
Victoria Rodriguez
Vatsal Ojha
Joshua Siktar
Anusha Rahman

\text{Alien Day}

===

Today (April 26) is Alien Day, which celebrates the Ridley Scott franchise Alien. This aptly named, unofficial holiday came from the sequel Aliens. The film take place on a moon which, before it was named, was called LV-426. 426. 4/26. April 26th. Woah.

Spaceship moving from point A (on one side of the moon) to the other side of the moon (at point B). — Image courtesy of Alex Federspiel

A spaceship is traveling around LV-426 to survey it. The navigational computer places the moon's center as the origin. The moon has a diameter of $2160$ miles and the vertex of the spaceship's trajectory has to be $50$ miles above the moon's surface (any less and they risk crashing into the planet, any more and they risk getting inaccurate readings). When they decide to start their trajectory they are at point $A$ which is $426$ miles from the moon's surface. Which of the following quadratic functions denotes the trajectory of the spaceship as it travels from point $A$ to point $B$ ?