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Today, we learned about acceleration, which is the change in velocity per unit of time. Velocity, in case you may have forgotten, is speed with direction. The picture above is an image of me in a go-kart race (which was incredibly stressful). The main goal of go-karting, when I went, wasn't so much to beat everyone else and finish the race first, but rather to go as fast as you can and challenge yourself. This means that you have to try and go as fast as you possibly can, which is all fun until you have to go around a corner and you end up spinning into the border. The only way you can go around a bend while still going as fast as possible, is to slow down in order to go around as smoothly as you could. When you are going slower, your velocity goes down, since you are going a shorter distance in a shorter amount of time; in other words, you are accelerating.
We also used the nifty little tool in the picture above in our labs today to learn more about how Position vs. Time graphs work, which then lead us to understanding more about Velocity vs. Time graphs. The labs in general were really helpful for me, and I was able to gain a stronger understanding of how to draw Velocity vs. Time graphs, as well as how to find the distance travelled by using said graphs.
That go-kart-ing looks really fun. Where do you get all these cool pictures? Your relation of the concept of velocity to speed in a race (one that you were actually in!) was a really good idea on your part. I wish I could relate physics back to real life experiences as easily as you seem to!
ReplyDeleteI like your example for acceleration. It is easy to understand and assures that slowing down is an acceleration. The lab with motion sensor was very helpful to me too.
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