Tom Sawyer used his slingshot to fire a pefect ball of chewed paper aiming precisely at Mr. Thatcher?

Question

standing 80 ft away. He perfectly
knows that initail horizontal velocity
produced by his slingshot is 100 ft/s.


Because of sidewise gust of wind the ball
instead hit Mr. Thatcher's daughter Maggi
2 ft to the right of her father 1.0 second later.

What was the speed of the wind?

"The sidewise gustof wind" means:

1) When Tom was aiming he could
not take the wind into account, because
there was no wind. In absence of the
wind the ball would hit the intentended
target.

2) For the duration of flight there is
uniform wind wind perpendicular
to the direction Tom->Father with
speed v.

Answer 1

I hope you made this problem up, because for a textbook problem it's ridiculously simplistic. The only possible solution is the one given in answer 1. However, the wad doesn't come out of the slingshot with the wind velocity component already present. The wind will accelerate it sideways at a rate that depends on wind speed and the wad's mass and drag coefficient, so it's a complex calculation.
Let's hope next time Tom nails Margaret Thatcher where she deserves to be nailed!

Answer 2

100 ft/s is an irrelevant figure here I think.

its a triangle. 80 feet on one side, 2 on the other. the path length is therefore 80.02 feet. therefore the wind gust was basically 2 feet per second.