PHYSICS

DESCRIBING MOTION
SPEED
SPEED
● The speed of something is the rate at
which it covers distance.
● The higher the speed, the faster it travels
and the more distance it covers in a given
period of time.
● If a car goes through a distance of 40
kilometers in a time of 1 hour, its speed is
40 kilometers per hour, usually written 40
km/h.
SPEED
SPEED
SCALAR AND
VECTORS
SCALAR AND VECTORS
● Scalar is a physical quantity that is
completely described by its magnitude.
The magnitude of a quantity refers to how
large it is.
● 600 ha, 300 km/h, and 75 watts
● A vector quantity, on the other hand, has a
direction as well as a magnitude
associated with it.
● Examples are displacement, force, etc.
SPEED AND VELOCITY
● The speed of a moving object tells us only
how fast the object is going, regardless of
its direction. Speed is therefore a scalar
quantity.
● The vector quantity that includes both
speed and direction is called velocity.
● If we are told that a car has a constant
velocity of 40 km/h toward the west, we
know all there is to know about its motion
and can easily figure out where it will be in
an hour, or 2 hours, or at any other time.
VECTORS
● A handy way to represent a vector
quantity on a drawing is to use a straight
line called a vector that has an arrowhead
at one end to show the direction of the
quantity.
ADDING VECTORS
● If we drive north for 5 km and then east
for 3 km, we will not end up 8 km from
our starting point.
● To add the vectors A and B, we draw B
with its tail at the head of A.
● Connecting the tail of A with the head
of B gives us the vector C, which
corresponds to our net displacement
from the start of our trip to its finish.
PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM
● The Pythagorean theorem is a useful
relationship that holds in such a triangle.
● This theorem states that the sum of the
squares of the short sides of a right
triangle is equal to the square of its
hypotenuse (longest side).
PYTHAGOREAN THEOREM
ACCELERATION
ACCELERATION
● An accelerated object is one whose
velocity is changing.
● The change can be an increase or a
decrease in speed.
● The object can be going faster and
faster, or slower and slower.
● Acceleration in general is a vector
quantity.
ACCELERATION
● Suppose we know the acceleration of a car (or anything
else) and want to know its speed after it has been
accelerated for a time t. What we do here is rewrite the first
equation into:
DISTANCE, TIME, AND ACCELERATION
● An interesting question is, how far does
something, say a car, go when it is
accelerated from speed v1 to speed v2 in
the time t?
● To find out, we begin by noting that the
car’s average speed ⊽ during the
acceleration (assumed uniform) is
DISTANCE, TIME, AND ACCELERATION
PHYSICS
ACCELERATION DUE
TO GRAVITY
FREE FALL
FREE FALL
● According to Galileo, the higher a stone is
when it is dropped, the greater its speed
when it reaches the ground
● The acceleration is the same for all stones,
big and small.
● Galileo’s experiments showed that, if there
were no air for them to push their way
through, all falling objects near the earth’s
surface would have the same acceleration
of 9.8 m/s2 .
FREE FALL
● Ignoring for the moment the effect of air
resistance, something that drops from rest
has a speed of 9.8 m/s at the end of the
first second, a speed of (9.8 m/s2)(2 s) =
19.6 m/s at the end of the next second, and
so on

● How far does a falling object fall?

FREE FALL
THROWN OBJECTS
● The downward acceleration g is the same
whether an object is just dropped or is
thrown upward, downward, or sideways. If
a ball is held in the air and dropped, it
goes faster and faster until it hits the
ground.
● If the ball is thrown horizontally, we can
imagine its velocity as having two parts, a
horizontal one that stays constant and a
vertical one that is affected by gravity.
THROWN OBJECTS
THROWN OBJECTS
● When a ball is thrown upward, the effect
of the downward acceleration of gravity is
at first to reduce the ball’s upward speed.
● The upward speed decreases steadily until
finally it is zero.
● The ball is then at the top of its path, when
the ball is at rest for an instant.
● The ball next begins to fall at ever-
increasing speed, exactly as though it had
been dropped from the highest point.
THROWN OBJECTS
THROWN OBJECTS
● When a ball is thrown upward at an
angle to the ground, the result is a
curved path called a parabola.
● The maximum range (horizontal
distance) for a given initial speed
occurs when the ball is thrown at an
angle of 45 ° above the ground.
● As the figure shows, for every range
up to the maximum there are two
angles at which the ball can be
thrown and land in the same place.
AIR RESISTANCE
AIR RESISTANCE
● Air resistance keeps falling things from
developing the full acceleration of gravity.
● In air, a stone falls faster than a feather
because air resistance affects the stone
less. In a vacuum, however, there is no air,
and the stone and feather fall with the
same acceleration of 9.8 m/s2.
● The faster something moves, the more the
air in its path resists its motion.
● At 100 km/h (62 mi/h), the drag on a car
due to air resistance is about 5 times as
great as the drag at 50 km/h (31 mi/h).
AIR RESISTANCE
● In the case of a falling object, the air
resistance increases with speed until it
equals the force of gravity on the
object.
● The object then continues to drop at a
constant terminal speed that depends
on its size and shape and on how heavy
it is.
● A person in free fall has a terminal
speed of about 54 m/s (120 mi/h), but
with an open parachute the terminal
speed of only about 6.3 m/s (14 mi/h)
permits a safe landing.
AIR RESISTANCE
● Air resistance reduces the range of a
projectile.
● In a vacuum, the ball goes farthest when it is
thrown at an angle of 45°, but in air (that is,
in real life), the maximum range occurs for
an angle of less than 45°.
● For a baseball struck hard by a bat, an angle
of 40° will take it the greatest distance.