We can determine the initial angle required for a baseball to reach a specific height above home plate by using numerical root-finding techniques such as "fsolve" in MATLAB. By defining an objective function that calculates the difference between the computed height from the trajectory function and the desired height (3 feet), "fsolve" iteratively adjusts the angle to minimize this difference to zero. Starting with a reasonable initial guess for the angle, "fsolve" efficiently converges to the solution, providing us with the angle that achieves the desired trajectory height.
Below is the modified MATLAB code to achieve the same:
% Define the objective function
objectiveFunction = @(theta) xyt(v0, theta, flag) - 3;
% Initial guess for theta
theta_guess = 9.0; % A reasonable guess close to the expected result
% Use fsolve to find the angle
options = optimoptions('fsolve', 'Display', 'iter'); % Optional: Display iterations
[theta_solution, fval, exitflag, output] = fsolve(objectiveFunction, theta_guess, options);
% Display the result
fprintf('The initial angle that results in a height of 3 feet is approximately %.4f degrees.\n', theta_solution);
Please find attached the documentation of functions used for reference:
optimoptions: www.mathworks.com/help/optim/ug/optim.problemdef.optimizationproblem.optimoptions.html
I hope this helps in resolving the issue.
