Mr. Baker finally decided to take this seriously and put both hands on the rope and applied a 500 N force to the left, while Jared and James still struggled with their 300 N force to the right. What is the net force and direction of motion?

like poles repel so keep pushing north to north and repels funny to see this

initial speed when it is dropped is 150 ft/s

now at the same moment the acceleration due to gravity is perpendicular to its velocity

so as we know that

now we have centripetal acceleration a = 32 ft/s^2 as its perpendicular to velocity

while tangential acceleration at the same moment will be zero

so

now radius of curvature is given as

so the radius of curvature just after it is dropped is 703.125 ft