A tennis player hits a ball at an angle of 50 degrees above horizontal so that it has an acceleration of 12 m/s2. What is the horizontal component of the acceleration?
So we want to know what is the magnitude of the horizontal component of acceleration ah if we know that the overall acceleration a=12 m/s^2 and the angle of overall acceleration and the horizontal acceleration is α=50°. We know that ah=a*cosα. So now it isn't hard to get the horizontal component: ah=12*cos50=12*0.64=7.71 m/s^2. So the correct answer is ah=7.71 m/s^2.
