A baseball with 40 Joules of kinetic energy at its peak must be traveling upwards. True or False?

The statement that a baseball with 40 Joules of kinetic energy at its peak must be traveling upwards is false because, at its peak height in a typical projectile motion scenario, the baseball momentarily has zero kinetic energy in the vertical direction while it is transitioning from moving upwards to moving downwards.

At the peak of its trajectory, all the initial kinetic energy has been converted to gravitational potential energy. While the baseball may still possess horizontal kinetic energy if it was given an initial horizontal speed, the vertical component of the velocity—and thus the vertical kinetic energy—would be zero at that specific moment. Therefore, the existence of kinetic energy at its peak height does not imply that the baseball is moving upwards; rather, it indicates that it is at the apex where vertical motion changes direction.