Friday, September 09, 2005
Vernier motion sensor demonstrations
A series of demonstrations with the Vernier sonar sensor to nail down some basic concepts of kinematics.
Books distributed, if we have them... we do! But they have to be indexed by the library first.
The demonstrations will be accompanied by definitions of
position
displacement
speed
velocity, instantaneous and average
d vs. t graphs and
v vs. t graphs will be shown.
a short worksheet of problems was given for homework.
Homework:
Sample speed-distance-time problems
1. A car leaves Antioch driving 50 mph west. How long will it take to travel 300 miles? yes, you can do this in your head--but write it out in the format shown in class.
2. A car leaves a stop light starting from rest, and steadily picks up speed until it reaches 40 mph after 20 seconds.
a) what was its average speed?
b) what was its instantaneous speed
i) at first?
ii) at 10 seconds?
iii) at 20 seconds?
c) how far did it travel? (don’t forget to attend to units!)
3. An airplane flies from Oakland to LA in an hour. Assume the distance is 400 miles.
a) What is the airplane’s average speed during the flight?
b) What is the airplane’s instantaneous speed during the flight?
c) If we include arriving at the airport, security, getting luggage, etc., the trip takes 4 hours, including the flight itself. What is the traveler’s average speed for the entire trip? Is this faster or slower than just driving a car at the speed limit?
Books distributed, if we have them... we do! But they have to be indexed by the library first.
The demonstrations will be accompanied by definitions of
position
displacement
speed
velocity, instantaneous and average
d vs. t graphs and
v vs. t graphs will be shown.
a short worksheet of problems was given for homework.
Homework:
Sample speed-distance-time problems
1. A car leaves Antioch driving 50 mph west. How long will it take to travel 300 miles? yes, you can do this in your head--but write it out in the format shown in class.
2. A car leaves a stop light starting from rest, and steadily picks up speed until it reaches 40 mph after 20 seconds.
a) what was its average speed?
b) what was its instantaneous speed
i) at first?
ii) at 10 seconds?
iii) at 20 seconds?
c) how far did it travel? (don’t forget to attend to units!)
3. An airplane flies from Oakland to LA in an hour. Assume the distance is 400 miles.
a) What is the airplane’s average speed during the flight?
b) What is the airplane’s instantaneous speed during the flight?
c) If we include arriving at the airport, security, getting luggage, etc., the trip takes 4 hours, including the flight itself. What is the traveler’s average speed for the entire trip? Is this faster or slower than just driving a car at the speed limit?
# posted by Jeff Adkins @ 7:56 PM 
