Unit 2 Kinematics

So far in Unit 2 I have learned that Kinematics is the study of motion. When people ask the question "Are you moving?" the correct answer is "In relation to what?". At first this made no sense, you are either moving or not, it's a simple question. Now it makes sense, if I am standing next to my dog and I start to walk backwards from my perspective it looks like my dog is moving and I am staying still. However my dog would think that she is staying still and I am moving. This unit we also have a lot of vocabulary, most are words that I already know but the definitions are more specific. A couple of new terms are scalar quantity and vector quantity. A scalar quantity has magnitude or muchness, a vector quantity has magnitude and direction.


I also learned a lot about graphing. So far there have been two types of graphs, position vs. time and velocity vs. time. The slope for position vs. time is velocity and the slope for velocity vs. time is acceleration. Finally the area under the curve of a velocity vs. time graph is displacement. In addition I have learned a couple equations. One is distance=average speed x time, and also average speed is total distance/total time.

This is a picture from the podium raceway in Kapolei. I went there last weekend and it was so much fun. Everyone starts at the same place, the origin, and race around a track. Eventually everyone ends at the same place they start therefore the displacement is zero but the distance is however many times you went around the track. 


picture: http://yaling.hawaii-aloha.com/upload/Image/podium_raceway_noa.jpg