Motion Essay, Research Paper

Time (s) Distance (m) Displacement (m) Velocity (m/s)

0.5 0.06 0.02 0.1

1 0.115 0.012 0.06

1.5 0.176 0.021 0.105

2 0.232 0.018 0.09

2.5 0.289 0.026 0.13

3 0.355 0.034 0.17

3.5 0.405 0.032 0.16

4 0.47 0.025 0.125

4.5 0.55 0.3 1.5

1. Initial velocity is the speed and direction in which the object is moving at the beginning of a time interval and final velocity is the speed and direction the object is moving at the end of a time period. Average velocity is the average speed and direction of the object. An example of this is a car starting at rest, facing west has a velocity of 0m/s and after 10s it has reached a speed of 20m/s in a westward direction.

2. Acceleration is the rate at which and object?s speed is changing. It is simply how the object?s speed changes In relation to the time it is taking to do so. An example of acceleration would be when a car begins to move it must increase its speed until it reaches the speed limit where it no longer accelerates.

3. The distance-time graph shows that the distance traveled has a direct proportion to the traveling time. The slope of the graph shows the objects speed, since it is a straight line the object has constant speed. Since the graph is a straight line it tells us that there is uniform acceleration. This can be compared to a car on the highway that is going at a constant speed and does not accelerate. The velocity-time graph shows that there is an indirect relationship between velocity and time. Since the slope of the graph is roughly zero this means that there is no acceleration.

 Through this lab we were to discover the relationships of time, distance, and acceleration at constant velocity.

 To complete this we lab we used a spark timer, a sparker, timer tape, and a meter stick.

 The lab began with having Joe place his foot in front of the truck while Bob turned on the sparker. When Joe moved his foot the truck moved with the stream of tape following it. Once the tape had completely passed through the sparker we took the tape to a lab table and began to measure. We looked for the second readable dot and considered it zero. Since the sparker emitted a spark .2 seconds we circled every fifth dot and measured the distance between our zero and the circled dots. To find displacement we measured one dot around each circled dot and subtracted the two numbers. Next we took the displacement and divided it by .2s to find the velocity. We did this for every half a second to 4.5s. We proceeded to fill in the chart with the information we discovered. After completing the chart we plotted points on two graphs, one of distance and time and the other of velocity and time. Next we forced straight lines on the graphs and found the slopes. On the velocity-time graph we also discovered area under the curve, which gave us distance. We compared this to the distance we had measured and found percent error.

 Using the graphs I found that distance is in a direct relationship with time when there is constant velocity. There is no acceleration when there is constant velocity and that there is not a direst relationship between time and constant velocity.