Harold the Hurler is a physics student who is renowned for his baseball pitching

Question

Harold the Hurler is a physics student who is renowned for his baseball pitching arm.He stands at the bottom of a deep pit and hurls a 148-g baseball through an open third-floor window in a nearby building. Harold's aim is so accurate that the ball then smoothly enters the tube of the Baseball Absorber that Harold invented and patented. In this device the ball compresses a spring until it comes momentarily to rest, and this maximum amount of compression is recorded as 45.7 cm. The spring's force constant is 843 N/m, and the position of the baseball's momentary rest is 7.25 m above ground level. The point in the pit where the Hurler starts his pitch is 11.3 m below ground level? What must have been the initial kinetic energy of the baseball when Harold released it? Use conservation of total mechanical energy, comparing the initial release to the moment when the ball has the spring at maximum compression. Ignore air resistance, and take g = 9.80 m/s2.

Explanation / Answer

There are two places where the energy (work) that has been imparted to the baseball has been stored - in gravitational potential energy (mgh) and in the potential energy of the spring (

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