#$&* course Phy 231 If we have a longer interval of time, or a graph that cannot be easily approximated by a single straight line, there are several things we can do to find the area. We can divide it into two trapezoids and improve our accuracy, but there is no reason to stop there. We could divide it into even more segments and improve our accuracy even farther. Or, if we have an equation for our graph, we can take the integral to find the exact area. The integral of V(t) over an interval of time gives us the change in position over the same time interval.