Average Speed and Instantaneous Speed

Suppose you are travelling along a long straight highway. You start driving, and an
hour later, you are 100 km away. Your average speed is the 100 km/hr. The
information you have is time and distance. You can calculate your speed by dividing the
distance you’ve traveled by the time of travel.

● average speed: Found by dividing the total distance traveled by the total time
required to travel.

· s=d/t , where x is the total distance traveled and t is time.

Speed=distance/time=100 km1/ hour=100 km/hr

During the hour that this trip took, your speedometer may have many different readings.
You might have been traveling faster during the first part of the hour, and then slower in
the second half. The reading on the speedometer is your instantaneous speed.

If you go back on a return trip, the calculation of the speed is the same. The result is still
100 km/hr (also abbreviated "kph" for "kilometers per hour"). Like distance, speed is a
scalar quantity and thus always positive. The speedometer reading is the same no
matter what direction you are driving in. Speed cannot provide information about
direction.

Average Velocity
Velocity is different than speed because velocity is a vector quantity and as such will
have both a magnitude and a direction. Velocity is the combination of speed and
direction. We define velocity as the change in position divided by the change in time.
Change of position can be either positive or negative, so velocity can be positive or
negative.

v=(Pf−Pi)/(tf−Ti)

Δv=Δx/(tf−ti) , where Δx=(Pf−Pi)

In the example above, the velocity on the outbound trip is +100 km/hr, while the velocity
on the return trip is -100 km/hr (Figure below). See below for detailed calculations.
These two equations can be rearranged to form others using the triangle method below.

d x

s t v t

LOOKING FOR SOLUTION

GIVEN

RELATIONSHIP

PROBLEM SET:
1. An airplane travels 3,260 meters in 40 s. What is the airplane’s average speed?

2. You ride your bike for a distance of 30 m. You travel at a speed of 0.75 m/s. How much
time does this take?

3. A train travels 225 meters in 2.5 s. What is the train’s average speed?