CAPSULE NOTE

STANDARD 7

SCIENCE
(CBSE SYLLABUS)

CHAPTER 13

MOTION AND TIME 1

A body is said to be in motion if it changes its position with respect to time and
surroundings.
Example:
 Flying birds
 A moving car
 Blades of fan
 Spinning of Earth on its axis
Motion can be along straight line, circular and periodic:
 Soldiers in a march past
Motion in a straight line
 Bullock cart moving on a straight road
 Hands of an athlete in a race
Periodic motion  Motion of a swing
 Motion of a pendulum
 Motion of Earth around the Sun
Circular motion
 Pedal of a bicycle in motion

FAST AND SLOW MOTION

 The motion of an object with respect to another object can be slow or fast.

 The distance covered by objects in a given set of time decides which object is
faster or slower.
Example:
Consider two objects A and B. If A covers a distance in a given time and B covers
the same distance in some more time, then A is said to be moving faster than B.
SPEED
Speed is the distance covered by an object in unit time.
Unit: meter/second (m/s)
Example: A car is moving with 50 kilometers per hour: This implies that the car will
cover 50 kilometers distance in one hour time.
Here we are using the term speed for average speed. Then,
Speed is the total distance covered divided by the total time taken.

MOTION AND TIME 2

 Total distance covered
Speed =
Total time taken

If an object is moving in a straight line with constant speed, then the object is said
to be uniform motion.
If the speed of an object moving along a straight line keeps changing, then the object
is said to be in non-uniform motion.
MEASUREMENT OF TIME
Time is the duration in which things or events takes place.
Example:
 A day is the time between one sunrise and the next sunrise.
 A month is a time from one new moon to the next.
 A year is the time taken by the earth to complete one revolution of the Sun.
Clocks or watches are used to measure the time which is much shorter than a day,
month or year.

Wall clock Table clock Digital clock

Unit of time: Second (s) is the basic unit of time.

There are different types of clocks available in ancient time such as:
 Sundial
 Sand clock
 Water clock
Sand clock
Simple pendulum
It consists of a small metallic ball (bob) suspended from a rigid stand by a thread.
The back and fro motion of a simple pendulum is periodic or oscillatory motion.

MOTION AND TIME 3

One oscillation: The pendulum is said to have completed one
oscillation when its bob, starting from its mean position O, moves
to A, to B and back to O.
Time period: The time taken by the pendulum to complete one
oscillation.
 Pendulum clock was invented based on the principle of the
oscillatory motion of a pendulum.
UNITS OF TIME AND SPEED
The symbols of all units are written in singular.
Example:
 It is 50 km not 50 kms.
 It is 8 cm not 8 cms.
Different units of time are used depending on the need:
Example:
 We express age in years than in days or hours
 Time taken to travel from home to school is usually expressed in hours or
minutes rather than in years.
Speedometer
 A device used in vehicles like scooter, bus and cars to measure their speed is
called speedometer.
 Speedometer measures the speed in km/h.
Odometer
Odometer is a device that measures the distance moved by the vehicle.
DISTANCE-TIME GRAPH
 Distance time graph is a line graph.
 The motion of an object can be represented using the distance-time graph.
Methods to draw a distance time graph:
1. Draw two perpendicular lines to represent the two axes and mark them as OX
and OY. O is the origin of the graph.

MOTION AND TIME 4

 2. Decide the quantity to be shown along the X-axis and that to be shown along
the Y-axis.
Here,
X-axis: Time
Y-axis: Distance

3. Choose a scale to represent distance and another to represent the time on the
graph.
Motion of a car: The scale can be taken as,

Example:
Time: 1 min = 1 cm
Distance: 1 km = 1 cm

4. Mark the values for the time and the distance on the respective axes according
to the scale you have chosen.

5. Mark the points on the graph paper to represent each set of values for distance
and time.

6. Join all the dots on the graph.

 If the distance time graph is a straight line, it indicates that the object is
moving with a constant speed.
 If the speed of the object keeps changing, the graph can be any other
shape.

Example:
The distance travelled by a car at various times are shown below:
Distance (km) 0 2 4 6 8 10
Time (min) 0 2 4 6 8 10

MOTION AND TIME 5

To draw the distance-time graph of this motion:
1. Take a graph paper and draw the two axes OX and OY.

2. We have small values for time. So, the scale to be used for showing time can
be 2 min = 2 cm. Then we mark the time values 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 on the line
OX as shown in the figure.

C
B
A

3. The distance values given in this problem are small. The scale to be used for
representing distance values on graph can be 2 km = 2 cm. We now mark the
distance values 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 on the line OY as shown in the figure.

4. Now we need to mark the readings from the table to the graph.

5. At point O on graph paper, time is 0 min and distance is also 0 km. The second
reading is time = 2 min and distance = 2 km. The vertical line above the 2 min
mark on the graph paper and horizontal line on the right side of 2 km mark on
graph paper cross at point A. So we put a pencil dot at point A.

6. In the same way, the third, fourth, fifth and sixth readings of time and the
corresponding readings of distance will give us points B, C, D and E on the
graph paper which are marked as pencil dots.

7. Join the dots from O to E through A, B, C and D. We will get the straight line
OE.

8. Since the distance-time graph is a straight line, we can conclude that the car
is moving with a constant speed or uniform speed.

MOTION AND TIME 6