go_team

Okay, so one of my students is a high school sophomore taking algebra and geometry in one year to catch up with her class. We're about halfway through the algebra course and she's got a quiz due tomorrow that she's going to submit online. One of the questions, though, has us both stumped --- mostly because it's so poorly worded. So here's the question, and a poll so you can tell me what you think the answer is/should be.

The formula for questions 14-16 came from the police department. They use this formula to determine the speed at which the car was going when the driver applied the brakes, by measuring the distance of the skid marks. So when you get to #16, it is referring to what a person would interpret the situation if the skid mark was zero distance. So, if the skid mark distance equaled zero, that would mean, the speed of the vehicle, r, was zero, or that the car was able to stop instantly.

For problems 14 through 16, the equation d = .05r² models the distance, d, in feet traveled by a car moving r miles per hour (r is the speed of the car) after the driver begins to stop the car.
[Poll #200387]

I thought about adding a fifth possible answer, "This is a really stupidly vague question, and all of these answers might be right since the wording of the problem is so bad", but I decided to give you guys the option of choosing multiple possible correct answers instead. Just to confuse you some more, my student chose C, I chose A, and I just emailed the independent study people to say "What the fuck?" and ask if answer D is a typo and it's meant to say "Both A and C are possible..." although that's not very satisfying, either.

Argle-bargle. She's hoping to submit this quiz tomorrow. Hopefully I hear back from somebody in independent-study land before then. Sigh.