course phy121
What do we mean by velocity?
The rate at which something traverses a distance.
How can we determine the velocity of a ball rolling down an incline?
Divide the distance the ball rolls down an incline by the time it takes the ball to traverse the distance.
We anticipate from our experience that a ball traveling down a greater incline, starting from rest, will experience a greater change in velocity. How can we determine whether the velocity actually changes, and whether the velocity increases in the manner that we expect?
Design an experiment in which the velocity of the first half of the ramp is compared to the velocity of the second half of the ramp.
How could we determine the velocity of the ball at a specific point?
By mapping the velocity of the ball out on a graph.
How do we determine the rate at which the velocity changes?
Take two points on the graph and find the difference in them. Divide that difference by the time taken to go from one velocity to the next.
How can we understand the concept of the rate at which velocity changes?
The rate at which velocity changes is the amount of change in velocity per time unit. If it takes 1 second for a ball to go from 1mm/sec to 2mm/sec you can say that the rate of change of the velocity is (1mm/sec)/sec."
Excellent.
This format is fine with me, but you might find the qa format for the class notes questions to be more useful, giving you an immediate feedback. If you can find the program on the Assignments page, let me know.