< Motion in a Line

Describing One Dimensional Motion--Answers

Click to reinitialize the applet

//frames per second //time step //controls will be added in a form, below

Questions

The animation above shows 4 balls moving in straight lines. For each ball write a description of the motion without using the word "acceleration" or any numbers.

Possible answers

  1. The red ball starts in the middle of the screen and moves with a constant velocity to the right, covering equal displacements in equal time.
  2. The green ball starts to the left of the screen and moves with constant velocity to the right, larger than the red ball.
  3. The blue ball starts at the left of the screen. It first moves slowly to the right, increases its velocity until the middle of the screen, then slows to a stop and just turns around moving to the left at the end.
  4. The magenta ball starts at the left of the screen. It moves to the right with an increasing velocity.


The ghost images are separated by 0.50 seconds. For each ball find the maximum velocity. Values for the velocities are given in this animation along with velocity vectors.

  1. The red ball has a constant velocity of 8.0 m/s to the right.
  2. The green ball has a constant velocity of 16.0 m/s to the right.
  3. The blue ball has a maximum velocity of 6.00 m/s in the middle of its motion.
  4. The magenta ball has a maximum velocity to the right of 34.5 m/s at the last position seen.

Problem © 2003 by Vern Lindberg (RIT) using Wolfgang Christian's Physlets