Physics Unit 2

This is a picture of my friends going down the stairs of a hotel we were staying at during our trip abroad in Japan. This picture relates to physics, because in unit 2 we are going over kinematics, which is the study of motion. The first thing we learned about in unit 2 was how all motion is relative. We learned that even though you are sitting in place, while you are not in motion relative to the room you are in, you are in motion relative to space, since the earth is constantly moving. Another example would be of my friends in the picture above. They are going down the stairs together, and since they are going at the same speed, they are not in motion relative to each other. They are, however, in motion relative to the floor.

We also learned about scalars and vectors in this unit. A scalar quantity is a measurement that has magnitude, or muchness, while a vector quantity has not only magnitude, but also direction. An example of a scalar quantity would be that we walked down 10 feet of stairs, while an example of a vector quantity would be that we walked down 10 feet of stairs to the lobby. We also learned about the differences between distance and displacement, and how distance is scalar while displacement is vector.    Distance, as you already know, is just the length of a route that you take, and displacement is the change in position that you have ater moving somewhere. An example of displacement while using the same scenario of the trip abroad would be going down the stairs from our room to a restaurant, eating, and then going back up to our room. Our displacement would be zero, because even though we had moved, our going back to where we started meant that we hadn't actually changed our positions.