Vocabulary
A point against which motion is measured...
What is a reference point?
A man is standing at a train station. The train misses its stop and speeds past the man. The man and one of the passengers on the speeding train are later interviewed by a reporter. The man at the train station stated that the train engineer moved by rapidly. The passenger said the train engineer was not moving at all. Were both correct?
Yes, both were correct because all motion is relative and requires a reference point. (#2)
Displacement or Direction? The car traveled 4 miles north
Displacement (#3)
The distance an object travels plus the direction from the starting point...
What is Displacement?
What is the speed of a boat that travels 10 miles in 2 hours? (in miles per hour)
5 mph (#7)
Speed or Velocity tell you how quickly and in what direction an object is moving in relation to a reference point?
Velocity (#5)
The change in an object's velocity over time...
What is acceleration?
A student is studying a caterpillar as it crawls on a wall. the caterpillar walks 20 centimeters up, then 10 centimeters to the left, then 20 centimeters down, and finally 10 centimeters to the right. What is the caterpillar's total displacement?
Zero - it ended up in the same spot in which it began! (#4)
Vector or Scalar Quantity?
1.2 m/s2 east
Vector Quantity (#6)
The rate at which an object is moving at a given moment in time...
What is Instantaneous speed?
What is the speed of a boat that travels 10 miles in 30 minutes (in miles per hour)?
20 mph (#8)
Acceleration or Displacement? involves a speed change or direction change (or both)
acceleration (the change in an object's velocity over time) (#12)
A physical measurement that contains only magnitude (number) and does not contain directional information...
Scalar Quantity
A car and a truck are traveling north on a highway. The truck has a speed of 50 mi/h and the car has a speed of 60 mi/h. if the truck is ahead of the car, what is the relative velocity? (Remember, when objects travel in the same direction, their relative speed is the difference between their individual speeds.)
10 mi/h toward each other (#10)
Vector or Scalar Quantity?
10 m
Scalar Quantity (#6)