Thomas the giant gorilla stood on a bridge 624 feet above the water below. He picked up a car threw it off the bridge with an initial velocity of 50 feet per second. How long will it take the car to splash into the water below?

The car will take approximately 4.865 seconds to splash into the water.

Explanation:

Let suppose that car moves initially downwards. We must see the kinematics of the car after being thrown off the bridge, it is quite certain that car experiment a free fall, in which it is accelerated uniformly by gravity. The time spent by the car to splash into the water is obtained from this equation of motion:

Where:

- Current height, measured in feet.

- Initial height, measured in feet.

- Initial velocity, measured in feet per second.

- Time, measured in seconds.

- Gravitational acceleration, measured in feet per square second.

If we know that , , and , this quadratic function is obtained:

Now we get the roots of the polynomial by Quadratic Formula:

,

Only the first root is physically reasonable. In a nutshell, the car will take approximately 4.865 seconds to splash into the water.