A fair amount of effort has been spent on the formulation of a simple, preferably noncalculus-based, solution for the maximum range,, of the projectile fired with speed from an elevation . Here is a solution along the lines of the textbook treatment of the projectile motion.
If the projectile is fired from the point at an angle θ with respect to the x-axis, its trajectory is described by
(1)
With the observation that the projectile hits the ground at , the relation between the firing angle and the range of the projectile, , is given by
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