MOTION AND THE CONCEPT OF FORCE

Motion is an ordinary phenomenon present in our environment. It is defined as the movement of an

object through a distance.

Motion may be described as:

 Specifying how far something has traveled in changing the position.

 Passage of time toward the school is 10 meters west, while the displacement of student B as he
moves in a straight line from his original position toward the school is 10 meters east. Both
student A and student B move through equal distances but their displacement are different
because student A moves to the west while Student B moves to the east.

Three ways of describing motion:

 Rectilinear motion – motion of an object travelling in straight line.

 Curvilinear motion – motion of an object travelling in curve line
 Angular motion – motion of an object travelling at certain angle.

Two areas of study motion:

 Kinematics – study that deals with the description of motion. It uses the concepts of speed,
velocity, displacement and acceleration.
 Dynamics - study that focuses on the way in which force produces motion

Distance and Displacement

Distance and displacement are two quantities that may seem to mean the same thing yet have
distinctly different definitions and meaning.

 Distance
Is a scalar quantity that refers to “how much ground on object has covered” during its motion. It
also represents the interval two points. It is just the magnitude of the interval. It is the total path
length travers by any object moving from one location to another.

 Displacement
Is a vector quantity that refers to “how far out of place an object is”; it is the object’s overall
change in position. It is also the shortest distance between a start point and an end point. The
distance between the points is it’s “magnitude” and the direction of the “vector”.
end
end

The black line shows the path, the

Co Co blue line shows the displacement
and the Direction of the
Displacement is up
Example A: Displacement

start start
Example A: Displacement

In this example the motion of travel is weaving back and forth. Let’s say it’s a car and that the person
driving has had way too much to drink.

The black dotted line is the path that was travelled by the car and the blue line is the displacement.
Notice how it starts where the car began and ends where the car stopped.

Notice that the total distance the car actually travelled is a lot longer that the displacement.

Displacements always have a direction and making an arrow is not specific enough so you will always
have to give a direction in your answer when you asked these types of questions.

In this example, no method of defining the direction was given (that is, no one said we have to use
North, East, South or West or positive or negative) so we can define our own way of indicating direction

Example B:
N

start end start end

The black dotted line shows the path the bird

took, and the blue lines shows the displacement

The Direction of the Displacement is East

In this example we are looking at the flight of the bird. Again, notice that the arrow starts where the
flight began and ends were it stopped.

More importantly:

Notice that in the top left of the example picture there is a compass indicating which way is north. That
means that the method of defining direction has been defined and that you must that given method to
describe the direction of the displacement. In this case the bird is moving all over the place, bit his
displacement is east.

Summary:

To summarize the concept… Displacement has nothing to do with distance travelled all together, it only
deals with how far you are from where you started and the direction you are from where you star
 SPEED AND VELOCITY
As mentioned in last topic distance and displacement are different terms. Distance is a scalar quantity
and displacement is a vector quantity. In the same way we can categorized speed and velocity. Speed is
a scalar quantity with just concerning the magnitude and velocity is a vector quantity that must consider
both magnitude and direction.

Speed
Speed can be defined as “how fast something moves” or it can be explained more scientifically as “the
distance covered in a unit of time. In daily life we use the first definition and say the faster object has
higher speed. Speed does not show us the direction of the motion it just gives the magnitude of what
distance taken in a given time. In other word’s it is a scalar quantity. We use a symbol v to show speed.

Speed = distance / time

From the above formula we can say that speed is directly proportional to the distance and inversely
proportional to the time

Let’s talk a little bit about the units of speed;

Motor vehicles commonly use kilometer per hour (km/h) as a unit of speed how ever in short distances
we can use meter per seconds (m/s) as unit of speed.

Example: Calculate the speed of the motorcycle that travels 450 meters in 9 seconds.

Speed = distance / time

Speed = 450m / 9s

Speed = 50m/s

Velocity
Velocity can be defined as “a speed having direction”. As you can understand from the definition of
velocity is a vector quantity having a both magnitude and direction. In daily life we use speed and
velocity interchangeably but in physics they have different meanings. We can define velocity as “the rate
of change of displacement” whereas “the speed is a rate of change of distance”. While we calculate
speed we look we look at total distance, however, in calculating velocity we must consider the direction
and in short we can just look at the in change position not a whole distance travelled. If a man walks 5
meters to east and then 5 meters to west speed of that man calculated by dividing total distance
travelled which is 10 meters to the time elapsed time, which is 0 meter divided elapsed time gives us
zero. In other words, if the displacement is zero we can not talk about the velocity.

Example calculate the speed and velocity of the man moving 45 meters to the north and 36 meters to
the south in 27 seconds.

First, we should calculate distance travelled and displacement of the man to calculate speed and
velocity.
Total distanced covered = 45m + 36m = 81m

Speed = total distance / time of travel = 81m / 27s = 3m/s

Velocity = displacement / time = (45m – 36m) / 27s = 9m / 27s = 0.33/s

Average speed and instantaneous speed

A moving object does not have the same speed during its travel. Sometimes it speeds up and sometimes
it slows down. At a given instant time what we read from speedometer is instantaneous speed. For
example, a car moving with a constant speed travels to another city, it must stop at red lights in the
traffic, or it slow down when unwanted situations occur in the road. At the end of the trip, if we want to
learn average speed of the car we divide distance to total time the trip takes.

Average = Total distance traveled

Time Interval

Assume that a car traveled at 500 kilometer in 5 hours. When we calculate the average speed we see
that it is 100 km/h. of course the car does not travel with a 100 km/h constant speed. it has many
instantaneous speeds at 100 km/h is the average of those instantaneous speeds.

Average velocity and instantaneous velocity

We can follow the same steps used in the definition of average and instantaneous speed while defining
average and instantaneous velocity. Instantaneous velocity is the velocity at a given instant of time,
however, as in the case of speed, average velocity is calculated with displacement over time.

Average = Displacement

Time Interval

Example a man travelling with his car 150 meters to the east than 70 meters to the west, calculate the
average speed and velocity of the car if the travel takes 10 seconds.

Average velocity = displacement / time interval displacement = 150m – 70m = 80m

Average velocity = 80m / 10s = 8m/s east

Average speed = total distance traveled / time interval

Average speed = (150m + 70m) / 10s

Average speed = 22m/s