Velocity

and
Acceleration
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 Scalar quantities versus vector
quantities

Scalar quantities have a size

(or magnitude) only.
Eg: Speed of the car was 60km/h

Vector quantities have both size (magnitude)

and direction.
Eg: The boat sailed 30km north.

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 How do we draw a vector?
As an arrow !!
the length of the arrow represents the size of the
vector
The direction the arrow points indicates the
direction of the vector!
When we draw vectors we need to include a
reference direction and a scale (e.g. 1cm = 1km)

4.3km North west

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 Distance
and
Displacement

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Distance
is a scalar quantity!
is how far something has moved.
is measured in metres etc.
Displacement
is a vector quantity.
is how far an object has moved from its starting point
and in what direction.
measured in metres but also has a direction.
is the (straight line) distance between 2 points with
the direction given too!

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If the bear skis the 7 metres to the tree then back
to the start and then all the way to the house,
what distance would he have gone? _______m

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What would his displacement from the starting
point be ? ___________ m in an easterly
direction.
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Speed
and
velocity

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Speed is a scalar quantity!
It is how fast something has travelled
It is measured in metres/second or
km/hour.
Velocity is a vector quantity.
This is how fast and in what direction
something travels IN A STRAIGHT
LINE!!!
This is measured in m/s or km/h but
also has a direction.
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Speed
If a car travels 150 km in 2 hours then calculate the
average speed of the car:
Average Speed = distance travelled/ time
= d/t
= 150 km/ 2 h
= 75km/h
Or write it like this:
= 75 km h ⁻¹

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Velocity
If a plane travels 480 km in a southerly direction for 2
hours then calculate the average velocity of the
plane:
Average velocity= distance travelled in a straight line
time
Vav = s/t
= 480 km/ 2 h South
= 240km/h South
Or write it like this:
= 240 km h ⁻¹ South

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How do we convert a speed or velocity from km/h
to m/s or the other way around?
How many metres in a km? 1000m.
How many seconds in an hour? Mmmmm, a bit harder…
60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour so
60 x 60 = 3600 seconds in an hour.
1km/hr = 1000/3600 m/s
75km/h = 75 x 1000/3600 m/s = 20.8 m/s
10m/s = 10 x 3600/1000 km/h = 36km/h

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A different way of writing these:

You are used to seeing “kilometres per hour”

written as km/h but it is written ‘scientifically’ in the form:
km h-1

And metres per second can be written as m/s or better still:

m s-1

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A canoe travels a distance of 500 m
in 100 sec. What is the canoe's
speed?
speed = d/t

A second canoe travels a distance of 200

meters in 40 seconds. What is this canoe's
speed?

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Remember that if an object is going at a constant
speed but changes direction (turns) then its velocity
changes!!

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 All these abbreviations – what do they stand
for???!!!
d = distance
s = displacement
t = time
v= velocity or final velocity
u = initial velocity
a = acceleration

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 Acceleration
•Acceleration is a vector quantity.

•When an object increases velocity

(speeds up) we say that it is
accelerating.

•When an object is slowing down we

say it has negative acceleration,
deceleration or retardation.
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How do we calculate acceleration (negative or positive)?
Acceleration = final velocity – initial velocity
time
Units = m/s2 or m s-2
or metres per second per second.

a =v–u
t

a = acceleration, v = final velocity,

u = initial velocity, t = time.

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Now lets try an example.

A B
At point A , the bike is going at 10 ms-1 , 5 seconds later
at point B , the bike is going at 45 ms-1
What acceleration does the bike have between A and B?
a = (v – u)/ t
= (45 – 10) / 5
= 35/5
= 7 ms-2 . Which means it is speeding up: each
second it goes 7 m/s faster than the second before!
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Now lets try another example.

C D
At point C , the bike is going at 45 ms-1 , 10 seconds later
at point D , the bike is going at 20 ms-1
What acceleration does the bike have between C and D?
a = (v – u)/ t
= (20 – 45) / 10
= -25/10
= - 2.5 ms-2 . Which means it is slowing down: each
second it goes 2.5 m/s slower than the second
before!
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 A B
At A the camel has a velocity of 3 m/s, it accelerates at
2m/s². What is its velocity 4 seconds later at B?
a = (v – u)
t
So rearrange: v = u + at
= 3 +(2 x 4)
=3+8
= 11 m/s
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If we took photos of the camel at 1 second intervals before
he started accelerating, the series of pictures would look
like this:

t=1s t=2s t=3s t=4s

t=5s

Notice that the intervals between the positions are equal.

This is because the camel was going at a constant
velocity (no acceleration!!!)

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We now take photos of a runner at 1 second intervals with an
initial velocity of 2m/s and acceleration of 1m/s/s.
(She starts accelerating at t = 1 seconds.)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
distance in metres
Notice that the intervals between the positions are
increasing by 1 m each second. This is because the runner
was accelerating at 1m/s/s. (Is this a realistic acceleration?)
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Another equation!!!
Sometimes we need to work out how far an object has
moved – or been displaced - when all we know is its
initial velocity, final velocity and acceleration!!!
To work this out we use this equation:

s = ut + ½ at2

Where s = displacement, t = time, u= initial velocity

and a = acceleration.

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Notice that we can rearrange this equation and use it
to work out other things such as initial velocity!
Lets look at an example:
A thief jumps in out of a window and lands on a taxi
going past.
The taxi driver gets a fright and accelerates at 7m/s/s.
If the taxi takes 4 seconds to travel 90 metres
before crashing into a vegetable cart, what was its
initial velocity when
the thief landed on it?

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What do we know?
s = 90 m, t = 4 s, a = 7m/s2, u = ?
Rearrange: s = ut + ½ at2

u = (s – ½ at2) / t
u = (90 – ½ x 7 x42) / 4
u = 8.5m/s

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 NOTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You will have a test on this first section of
physics on ___________!!!

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 Motion graphs
It is often easier to show the motion of an object with a
graph rather than with words.

There are 2 types of graph we will look at:

Displacement– time graphs (or distance – time graphs.)
Velocity - time graphs (or speed- time graphs.)

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• With both types of graph, time is plotted on
the x axis.
• The further to the right along the x axis we go
– the longer the time from the start!
• Velocity, distance etc are always plotted on the
y axis.
• We assume the initial direction of motion to
be positive.

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 A body at rest. Ie it is stopped or

9 10 11
standing still!
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2 3 4 5 6 7
Distance (m)
1
0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
time (s)

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 An object moving at constant speed.
Constant speed because the lines are straight!

9 10 11
Which line shows the object going fastest?

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2 3 4 5 6 7
Distance (m)
1
0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
time (s)

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 Speed is given in m/s so we can
work out the speed here by

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saying speed = rise/run =
distance/time.
Work it out for each.
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2 3 4 5 6 7
Distance (m)
1
0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
time (s)

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 A body accelerating!
You can see that the speed is increasing: the
distance travelled is more each second so this

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shows it is accelerating!!
8
2 3 4 5 6 7
Distance (m)
1
0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
time (s)

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Lets look at an example:
First we will give the information in words then as a
displacement – time graph.

Mark starts from point A and travels at 2m/s for 3 seconds

to point B. He then stops at point B for 4 seconds before
going back towards point A at an initial velocity of -1.5m/s
for 2 seconds then stopping at an intersection for 1
second before continuing to point A at -1.5 m/s.

Ok – lets look at this graphically!!!!!

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 Marks’ trip Much Easier

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than words!!!
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2 3 4 5 6 7
Distance (m)
1
0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
time (s)

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This axis What is the difference between

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has
SPEED this graph and the ones we
not looked at before??
distance
on it!!!!
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2 3 4 5 6 7
Speed (m/s)
1
0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
time (s)

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 So what does this graph show?

9 10 11
It shows that the object
is moving at a constant
speed of 5.5m/s
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2 3 4 5 6 7
Speed (m/s)
1
0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
time (s)

37
 What does this graph show?

9 10 11
It shows that the objects’
speed is increasing or the
object is accelerating!
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2 3 4 5 6 7
Speed (m/s)
1
0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
time (s)

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 What does this graph show?

9 10 11
It shows that the
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objects’ speed is
2 3 4 5 6 7

decreasing or the
Speed (m/s)

object is decelerating!
1
0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
time (s)

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 Which line shows faster
acceleration? Green or blue?
Acceleration = speed/time so

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Blue = 3m/s/s
Green = 1m/s/s
Steeper slope = faster acceleration!
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2 3 4 5 6 7
Speed (m/s)
1
0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
time (s)

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 Putting it all together:

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Steady Fast
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speed deceleration
Or
2 3 4 5 6 7

Fast
negative
Speed (m/s)

accn
acceleration

Slow
accn
1
0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
time (s)

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 What other information can we get from
displacement – time and speed time graphs?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Speed (m/s)
10 20 30 40 50
Distance (m)

60

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Time (s)
Time (s)
Gradient = rise/run = 7/7 = 1m/s/s = acceleration!!!
Gradient = rise/run Area under the graph = ½ time x speed
= 30/6 = s x m/s
= 5m/s =m
= speed! = distance travelled!!!

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Lets look at the last example and work
out the distance travelled.

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 Work out the area under
the line to work out the

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distance travelled
8
2 3 4 5 6 7
Speed (m/s)
1
0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
time (s)

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The end…..
Test Time!!


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