Thread: Kind of confused.

An elevator travels vertically in a building that has 32 floors, each 11 feet tall. The height h above the first floor after t seconds is given by h = 297 – 4.4t.


How long will it take to reach the second floor?



Now I am confused where the 297 came from. The 32 floors are a total of 352 ft and each floor is only 11 feet so why start at 297 feet?

I am assuming 4.4t represent feet per second.
I am assuming height is being represented in feet.
I am also assuming they are asking this when the elevator starts at the top floor and not the bottom floor because the larger number you plug in for t, the lower the height becomes.

The elevator must be starting from floor 27.

That is what I was wondering. Usually these problems give some sort of indication that that is the case so I was confused. So I should just plug in 11 for H and solve then. Thanks.