Science Textbook

A Little Book About Motion
Andrew C. Mumm
This course is an introduction to The Newtonian Paradigm which was arguably the
starting point of modern science. This paradigm is characterised by Newton’s laws of
motion, his universal law of gravity, and the scientific method of inquiry (which is
the idea that very careful evidence-based reasoning reveals the truth about our world).
Thousands of years ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle put forward ideas that
seemed to explain the world in a satisfactory way. These ideas, however, turned out to be
incorrect and they held back human progress for many centuries (authentic and robust
progress is only possible when you know how the world really works). This changed
in the 1600s, when Galileo’s rebellious mindset and detailed investigations into falling
bodies together with Newton’s freshly invented mathematical language of calculus, sud-
denly made it possible to accurately explain all motion in the Universe. Strong empirical
evidence confirmed this new way of thinking and the Universe went from incompre-
hensible and mystical to completely known and predictable. It’s difficult to overestimate
the importance of the Newtonian Paradigm to the development of our industrialised
modern world and it’s the main reason science is the most important subject in school!
vanessaw2025@student.cis.edu.hk
©2022 by Andrew C. Mumm
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edition 1.5
August 17, 2022
andrewcmumm.wixsite.com/onlyonewayofknowing
A little book about motion
© Andrew C. Mumm
"Of all the intellectual hurdles which the human mind has confronted and has overcome in the last fifteen
hundred years the one which seems to me to have been the most amazing in character and the most stupen-
dous in the scope of its consequences is the one relating to the problem of motion."
— Butterfield, H., The Origins Of Modern Science, Chapter 1, New Ed. (1957)
Lesson 1: The birth of modern science
Figure 1: We are surrounded by

It’s obvious that everything is in motion. Just look around you. moving objects, but very few people
know how to describe and explain
I see trees swaying in the wind, students walking from classroom motion correctly. The ancient Greek
to classroom, and my fingers are moving across the keyboard as I philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE)
write these words. I hear cars driving on the road and planes roar- put forward incorrect ideas about
motion that persisted for centuries.
ing in the sky. Beyond these immediate observations, much more His doctrine was based on ordinary
is taking place that cannot directly be seen. Microscopic organ- everyday observations, but he didn’t
perform very careful experiments – he
isms are crawling around everywhere, molecules in the air are in didn’t look closely enough – and if you
constant, random motion1 , and countless chemical reactions are don’t pay attention, you will make the
rearranging atoms in the matter surrounding us. The Earth we same mistakes he did!
both inhabit is dashing through space in its orbit around the Sun at 1
Air molecules at normal room tem-
an average speed of 30 km/s and distant galaxies are racing away perature have average speeds (between
collisions) of around 500 m/s.
from us at much higher speeds due to the expansion of the Uni-
verse (something we are still trying to understand). Electrons drift
through electrical devices at surprisingly slow speeds of around 2
The speed of light in empty space is
one of the fundamental constants
0.1 mm/s and invisible electromagnetic waves allow us to com-
of nature. It has the exact value
municate wirelessly at the speed of light2 . Your heart is transport- 299 792 458 m/s by definition.
ing nutrients to all parts of your body by pumping blood around
your circulatory system3 , and inside every cell, proteins and other 3
At speeds of around 10 cm/s.
a little book about motion 2
macromolecules are busy keeping you alive. Yes, just about every-
thing is moving! It should come as no surprise then, that motion
plays a central role in our understanding of the world around us.
A human walking 101 km/h
Any first course in physics (and modern science in general) ought A car on a highway 102 km/h
to properly address this concept. We will start our study of motion A passenger airplane 103 km/h
A satellite in orbit 104 km/h
by looking at how a single particle moves. Things get much more
complicated when large systems of particles move around and in- Table 1: Some average speeds rounded
teract with each other, so that is something you will need to study off to the nearest order of magnitude
(= the nearest power of ten).
later.
Concept #1: Calculus is the language of motion
The key to understanding motion is learning how to describe in-

stantaneous change accurately and this is best done using calculus. 4
The German polymath Leibniz
apparently also developed the ideas
Calculus is a field of mathematics and this particular "language"
of calculus independently of Newton,
was invented by the English mathematician and scientist Isaac so there is a famous controversy
Newton (1642-1726)4 . Although he did so in order to explain mo- surrounding its invention. Read more
at this link.
tion better, calculus is not only useful to physicists: A lot of quanti-
ties in our world change continuously5 and calculus is an important 5
Change does not always refer to a
tool used by many different scientists, engineers, and economists.6 change in time, e.g. as the radius of a
circle increases, the area also increases.
By studying motion you will essentially begin the study of calculus, Any change between two continuous
but all the rigour required to master this subject is best covered in a variables can be dealt with accurately
using the calculus of functions.
dedicated mathematics course. All serious learners of physics find
out that you eventually need to be fluent in calculus, but in this 6
A lot of money can be made by un-
course (and in most high-school physics courses, e.g. the IB DP) derstanding how markets, companies
formal knowledge about calculus is not required. and societies change, so economists
study a lot of calculus. What most
economists unfortunately don’t study
is the scientific method of inquiry, which
is why they often fail to make reliable
predictions... :)
Figure 2: This seemingly random mess

of mathematical curves accurately de-
scribes the motion of a particle thrown
up in the air – with air resistance (solid
lines) and without (dashed lines). The
acceleration functions are red, velocity
functions are green, and the position
functions are blue. The curves were
obtained by solving Newton’s 2nd law
of motion using calculus.
In this short unit we won’t have time to explore the topic of mo-
tion in all its detail (there will be almost no mention of energy, mo-
mentum, rotation, etc.), but you will be exposed to the fundamental
concepts position, velocity, acceleration, and force by studying one
significant example of motion: An object falling through the air
close to the surface of the Earth. Investigating falling objects might
seem like a boring thing to do, but knowing the correct answer to
questions such as “do heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones?”
is key to understanding all motion in the Universe (and one could
hardly call that boring!). Different topics such as architecture, af-
fordable space travel, weather forecasts, robotics, power production,
sports science, animated movies and computer games all require
a good understanding of why things move they way they do. And
learning how to describe falling objects is the best place to start.
Concept #2: Science is a way of thinking
The problem of understanding motion puzzled thinkers for a very

long time (thousands of years!) and it was first answered correctly
by Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Isaac Newton (1642-1726). This
shows just how difficult it was to get right. In 1687 Newton wrote
a book, the Principia, in which he stated three laws of motion and
a law of gravity – a body of knowledge now refered to as Newto-
nian mechanics. These laws explained all motion in the Universe
and this was a key moment in the so-called scientific revolution
that was already taking place in Europe at the time. The driving
force behind this scientific revolution was the desire to find a better
answer to the important (and still highly relevant) question: “How
do we decide which explanation is correct?” For as long as we know, 7
Even today, many people still have
very low standards for accepting truth
people have tried to figure things out by arguing endlessly and only
claims and this lack of understanding
relying on superficial data collection and biased thinking.7 But in of what constitutes good evidence is a
the beginning of the 1600s small communities of skeptical thinkers direct threat to human civilisation.
Actions follow from ideas and wrong
in Europe discovered that the scientific method of inquiry, which ideas lead to wrong actions.
requires a very systematic and careful experimental approach, is a
much more effective and reliable way of knowing. Newton’s explanation 8
The Common Era (CE) begins with
year 1. BCE stands for Before Common
of all motion in the universe, and its experimental verification, was Era. CE and BCE are used in exactly
a very convincing demonstration of this. the same way as the traditional ab-
Figure 3 contains excerpts of two paintings representing these breviations AD and BC. AD is short
for Anno Domini, Latin for year of the
very different approaches to "knowing". The painting on the left Lord. BC is an abbreviation of Before
(from around 350 BCE)8 shows two influential ancient Greek Christ. Because AD and BC hold re-
ligious connotations, many scientists
philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, debating the truth about the prefer to use the more modern and
world. By not fully appreciating the experimental rigour required neutral CE and BCE to indicate if a
in evidence-based reasoning they didn’t make much progress in year is before or after year 1.
understanding our physical reality. The painting on the right shows 9

Among them was Blaise Pascal’s
one of the first modern scientific communities in 1648. This group brother-in-law. Pascal contributed to
of people9 climbed a mountain outside of Paris and used the newly several fields in physics and mathe-
matics and in honour of his scientific
invented barometer to verify that the pressure of the atmosphere contributions, the name ’pascal’ (Pa)
decreases with height. This discovery supported the revolutionary has been given to the SI unit of pres-
sure.
idea of empty space (a vacuum) being above our atmosphere. By
Figure 3: These two paintings might

look similar, but the approaches to
sharing results and ideas with other people who performed sim- learning they represent couldn’t be
more different. In the 2000 years
ilar experiments themselves, reliable knowledge was effectively that separate the paintings (from 350
acquired and could be put to good use (for example, better pumps BCE to 1648 CE), not much progress
were built and the vacuum10 was more extensively investigated). It seems to have happened. But after
the scientific method of inquiry was
is worth emphasising that this way of thinking is a very recent de- discovered, a lot of progress (good
velopment in the history of mankind. We have known how to solve and bad, unfortunately) took place
(think about how much the world has
quadratic equations for over 4000 years, but we have only been fol- changed from the 1600s to the 2000s.)
lowing the scientific method of inquiry for 400 years - and just look
at how much progress we have made in that short time! 10
The concept of a vacuum kept
It’s not easy to explain in a few sentences how the scientific thinkers busy for a long time (and
still does!). Aristotelians claimed it
method of inquiry works because it involves many different ideas didn’t exist because a thicker medium
and approaches that blend together to create one overall way of (say water compared to air) made
things move slower, so in empty
thinking. The following resource developed by the University of
space objects ought to have an infinite
California at Berkeley goes over all the important details and I speed which seemed unreasonable.
would recommend you visit this page from time to time: Under- Atomic physics only progressed due
to the development of better vacuum
standing Science. tubes, and thoughts on light travelling
through empty space led to Einstein’s
famous special theory of relativity in
Lesson 1: Problems 1905.
1. Most people can imagine that "mass" and "shape" are quantities
that might affect how fast objects fall. In the following two very
simple demonstrations (= short experiments) we will control
(= keep constant) one of these quantities, vary (= change) the
other one, and see how that affects the time it takes to fall a
certain distance. For each demonstration, state which quantity
is being controlled, which quantity is the independent variable
and which quantity is the dependent variable. Also, make a
prediction about the outcome of each experiment:
• Two identical sheets of paper, one crumpled up into a ball,

dropped at the same time.
• Two equal-sized tennis balls, one light (normal) and one heavy
(filled with sand), dropped at the same time over a short dis-
tance.
Observe carefully as I carry out the demonstrations – were your

predictions correct? Here is a slo-mo video of the ball drop:
A light and a heavy tennis ball dropped over a short distance.
Draw a conclusion based on these observations.
2. Based on the previous experiments, answer the question: “Do

heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones?” Go to this padlet and
type up your answer. Try to add as much detail as possible.
3. We will now repeat the tennis ball drop from the previous ques-
tion, but this time we’ll drop them over a long distance. First
predict the outcome, then observe carefully as I carry out the
demonstration. What can you conclude based on these demon-
strations? Does this conclusion contradict your previous con-
clusion? Here are some videos of the demonstration (thanks to
Sasha Manu for helping out with the demonstrations): One light,
one heavy tennis ball: Whole drop, slowmo of impact. Here is a
drop of two identical tennis balls for comparison: Whole drop,
slowmo of impact.
In order to truly understand what is happening in the demon-

strations shown above we need to carefully collect some data (’gather
good evidence’) and learn how to draw valid conclusions based on
that (’evidence-based reasoning’). If we can’t explain something as
simple as a few tennis ball drops, how can we call ourselves knowl-
edgeable? How can we ever solve the problem of climate change?
How can we ever hope to make any progress whatsoever!?
Lesson 1 Quiz
Check your understanding of this lesson: Here is a quiz.
© 2021 Andrew C. Mumm
"The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is the experiment.
The experiment is the sole judge of scientific truth."
— Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol I, 1-1
Lesson 2: Being certain about your uncertainties
Figure 1: Legendary physicist Richard

Feynman is seen here at the Nobel
Prize Award ceremony in 1965. He
won the Nobel Prize in physics for his
contributions to the development of
quantum electrodynamics and he was
a keen populariser of physics through
books and lectures.
All measurements are uncertain to some degree and drawing

scientific conclusions depends very much on how certain you are
about your uncertainties. Most students (and people in general) find
it very difficult to wrap their heads around uncertainty. There is
no easy “formula” to follow when estimating and dealing with un-
certainties and every experiment is associated with its own unique
uncertainties. We have general approaches and sensible rules to
follow, but in the end, students have to actually think critically and
independently about what they are doing. The real world is messy
and confusing1 , and knowing how to cope with that is a very im- 1
"Confusion is the sweat of learning"
portant skill. Modern science was invented – the human race truly - it’s good if you are confused! It
means you have started the process
grew up – when we realised this. In this lesson we’ll perform a sim- of learning. If things are too easy, you
ple motion experiment and use it to go over a few basic concepts: have nothing to learn.
Concept #1: Data tables
In this lesson you will be conducting a small experiment in order

to learn how to collect data properly in a spreadsheet. You will be
performing the following investigation: How does the time it takes for
a tennis ball to roll down a slope depend on the distance it travels? The
independent variable here is distance so that will be the first col-
umn of your data table. Ideally we always strive for at least 10 values
of the independent variable. The dependent variable is time. Repeat
the experiment 5 times for each value of the independent variable
(distance). These repetitions are called trials and they will make up
the next columns in your spreadsheet. Ideally we always strive for at
least 5 trials of the dependent variable. Open up a spreadsheet and
type your measurements (values/numbers only) into the correct
cells. Add proper column headers as shown in figure 2. The header
contains the name of the variable I’m measuring (distance or time) 2
The slanted line in ’Time / s’ is
actually a division sign and the logic is
and the unit of measurement (centimeters = cm or seconds = s). I’ve
as follows: Time is a physical quantity
merged the last five cells, so the header ’Time / s’ covers all trials.2 expressed as a value and a unit, e.g.
“Time = 0.82 s”, so if we only want the
numerical value we divide both sides
by the unit and get “Time / s = 0.82”.
Figure 2: The raw data.
Concept #2: Absolute uncertainty and significant digits nano n 10−9

micro µ 10−6
milli m 10−3
When considering the uncertainties of this experiment, we first centi c 10−2
need to consider the uncertainty due to the equipment used. Take a kilo k 103
look at your stopwatch or timer that you used. What is the smallest mega M 106
giga G 109
unit that the timer can measure? On a typical stopwatch, it is 0.01 s
and we could call this the equipment uncertainty. One sensible Table 1: Some of the common prefixes
rule would be to say that the equipment uncertainty on a digital scale that we use in science to modify the
size of a unit. 0.01 s could be called
is equal to this smallest unit that can be displayed, so e.g. if the mea- one centisecond, 1 × 10−2 s = 1 cs, but
surement was 1.80 s, then we will assume that this measurement is nobody ever really says that.
likely to be any value between 1.79 or 1.81 seconds. We write
1.80 ± 0.01 s
When a measurement is expressed in this way, we call 1.80 the

best estimate and 0.01 the absolute uncertainty. Notice how we
write 1.80 (not just 1.8) since we are measuring with an uncertainty
on the second decimal so we need to show two decimals in our 3
Zeroes to the left of a number don’t
count as significant (who would ever
recording of the best estimate. Hence 1.80 is written with three
write 37 as 0037?), but zeroes to the
significant digits, whereas 1.8 only has two significant digits3 . right of a number do. Be aware that
Since every measurement was taken with this stopwatch, we add some math teachers count significant
figures slightly differently than a
this equipment uncertainty to our table as shown below (you get scientist would - the scientists, of
the ± symbol on a mac by pressing ’option’ + ’shift’ + ’+’). I also course, are the ones you should listen
to because they are the ones dealing
right-aligned the cells so that the decimals line up nicely and I
with real experimental uncertainty all
increased the number of decimal places shown so that it shows the time!
1.80, not just 1.8 (your spreadsheet has a button for doing this - can
you find it?)
Figure 3: The raw data with equip-

ment uncertainty and showing the
correct number of significant digits.
Now what about the uncertainty of the distance measurements?

The equipment used to measure the distance is a ruler with mark-
ings as small as 1 mm apart, but it doesn’t seem reasonable to claim
that we can position the ball to the nearest millimeter since we are
judging its position rather roughly against the scale. We also have
the problem of not being able to determine exactly when it passes
the 0 cm point at the bottom of the slope. All in all, one would
therefore expect the uncertainty of the distance to be greater than
1 mm, perhaps as much as 0.5 cm. This is an issue we could discuss
in greater depth, but for now let us settle on an absolute uncer-
tainty of 0.5 cm for the distance, see figure 4.
Figure 4: The raw data with equip-

ment uncertainty and showing the
correct number of significant digits.
Concept #3: Percentage uncertainty
Now consider one of the time measurements, e.g.
1.77 ± 0.01 s
How “good” is this measurement? As we will see later, “good”

depends on many factors, but one thing we can do is quantify how
precise the measurement is: Take the absolute uncertainty 0.01 and
divide it by the best estimate 1.77 to get the relative uncertainty. If
you then multiply by 100%, you get the corresponding percentage
uncertainty:
0.01
≈ 0.0056 ≈ 0.6%
1.77
We often round off percentage uncertainties to one significant figure so
they are easier to read. What does 0.6% mean in this context? It
means that the uncertainty of what I’m measuring is only 0.6%
of the measured quantity. Any measurement with a percentage
uncertainty less than 1% would be considered very precise. An un-
certainty between 1% and 5% could be considered precise, between
5% and 10% slightly imprecise, more than 10% very imprecise,

and so on. Those words, however, are subjective and therefore
meaningless. What matters is that you have quantified the uncertainty
so that people can make up their own minds about it. Would you get on
an airplane if you knew 1% of them crashed?4 What about 0.001%? 4
The actual probability of a plane
Would you happily take a vaccine if 1% (1 out of 100) of those who crashing is around 0.00002%. Source:
This link.
took it died from a blood clot? What if 2% (2 out of 100) of peo-
ple died from the disease itself? When your life depends on it, you
want results that are extremely precise! But not only that, you also
want the results to be accurate... read on to learn what the difference
between precision and accuracy is.
Concept #4: Accuracy and systematic error
Precision is one thing, but accuracy is something else. Consider

our time measurements – do they actually represent the time it
takes the ball to roll a particular distance? Assuming the distance
is correct, maybe you stopped the stopwatch too early so that the
actual time is a bit longer?5 It might be a very precise measurement 5
Or maybe the stopwatch runs slow
(0.6%), but if you are not measuring the actual variable accurately, due to faulty electronics? It’s always
important to calibrate your equipment
then all that precision isn’t particularly useful! so that you know it is measuring what
If you stopped the stopwatch too early on every trial, then we you meant to measure in the correct
way.
call that a systematic error: All the measured time values would
be shorter than what the actual time is. Systematic errors cause all
measurements to be inaccurate in the same way (e.g. if you forget
to zero an electronic balance when measuring mass, then all mass
measurements will be off by the same amount). We always strive
for our scientific measurements to be precise and accurate. Figure 4 is
an illustration of the difference between precision and accuracy.
Figure 5: Comparing the two different

concepts of precision and accuracy.
Imagine you measure the density6 of a cube to check if it’s alu- 6

Density, denoted by the Greek letter
minium. In your first experiment, you measure ’rho’ ρ, is defined as mass per unit
volume:
m
ρ≡
2.64 ± 0.03 g/cm3 V
The unit is typically given in g/cm3 or
kg/m3 . Table 2 lists a few densities.
In your second experiment, using a different method, you mea-
sure
2.63 ± 0.18 g/cm3
Substance Density / (g/cm3 )
You can visualise the range of these two measurements using er-
water (at 0◦ C) 0.9998
ror bars as shown in figure 6. Say you know that the density of water (at 5◦ C ) 1.0000
pure aluminium is 2.70 g/cm3 by looking up the value in a well- rock (granite) 2.7
respected physics book (we call that the table value or accepted iron 7.87
mercury 13.5
value). Which experiment is most precise? Which one is accurate? osmium 22.6
Which experiment would you say is “best”? Discuss! atomic nuclei 2.3 × 1014
a black hole 2 × 1027
Table 2: Densities of some substances.

One of the interesting properties of
water is that the density depends on
temperature. Osmium is the densest
element, but by far the densest objects
in the the Universe are atomic nuclei,
neutron stars, and black holes.
Figure 6: Error bars are used to visu-

alise the uncertainty of a measurement.
I was once asked to measure the density of a cube of aluminium.

I measured it with different methods and got successively more
precise measurements, but at some point I noticed that the table
value of the density started to lie outside my range of error (like the
short error bars shown above). The more precise my measurements
became, the more inaccurate the result. My teacher was also puz-
zled by it, but in the end we discovered that the cube we thought
was pure aluminium was actually a metal alloy containing a small
amount of another metal! So in the end my measurements turned
out to be precise and accurate and they revealed something new
about the world – which is exactly the way science works.
Currently (2021) there is a fascinating “Crisis in Cosmology”
(also dubbed "Hubble Trouble"): Cosmologists measure the ex-
pansion rate of the Universe by measuring something called Hub-
ble’s Constant. Different teams use different methods and as those
measurements get more and more precise, they deviate from each
other more and more! The heart of the matter is that 67.4 ± 0.5 and
73.2 ± 1.3 disagree (the ranges don’t overlap). Are these measure-
ments precise? Which measurement is inaccurate? What is going
on? Nobody currently knows! We do know, however, that we don’t
fully understand this aspect of the Universe and hence we need to

collect more data and use that to modify our models about how the
Universe works.
Concept #5: Average and standard deviation
Let’s return to our tennis ball experiment. We have measured the

time it takes for the ball to roll down a certain distance and we
have performed five trials. Those five trials represent five measure-
ments of the same quantity, so we need to calculate the arithmetic
mean (the average) of these trials and find out how spread out all
the trials are from this average (the standard deviation). In most
spreadsheets you can easily calculate both by using the "average"
and "stdev" formulas. You go to the cell to the right of all your tri-
als, write "=AVERAGE(", and select the cells of your trials. Likewise
with "=STDEV(":
7
The exception to this rule (there
are always exceptions, don’t get too
The standard deviation is an estimate of the absolute uncertainty of the attached to certain rules!) is that if
average. Above, you can see the standard deviation is initially given the first significant digit is a 1, then
with lots of significant digits (0.03701 . . .). We always round absolute you are allowed to include a second
significant digit. E.g. 73.2 ± 1.3 is
uncertainties off in a sensible way and that typically means to one signif- acceptable, as is 2.63 ± 0.18.
icant digit7 , in this case that would be 0.04 (your spreadsheet has a
button that decreases the number of decimal places - can you find 8
Notice how the number of significant
digits is often NOT equal to the number of
it?). Since 0.04 is rounded to the second decimal, then the average needs to
decimal places. If I got one dollar every
be rounded off to the second decimal place too.8 So in our example, the time a student made that mistake, I
average would be rounded off to 1.74 s with an absolute uncertainty would be a millionaire :)
of 0.04 s:
1.74 ± 0.04 s
The table ends up looking like the one below (notice how I have
merged the cells in the top row, so that “Time / s” is again a header
for all relevant columns):
Figure 7: The final processed data.
Concept #6: Random uncertainty
When we calculate the percentage uncertainty of the average quan-

tity on our first row,
0.04
≈ 0.023 ≈ 2%
1.74
it is less precise than just one single measurement, e.g. 1.77 ± 0.01 is
only 0.6% uncertain. Why is the uncertainty of the average around
four times bigger? This is because other, more unpredictable, uncer-
tainties have been revealed by taking trials. In our experiment we can
point to a few rather obvious explanations for this extra uncer-
tainty:
1. One issue is the release force. When I remove my hand from

the ball, I assume9 I am releasing it from rest, but I might ac- 9
In scientific experiments (and life in
cidentally give it a small nudge which would affect the time it general!) we always make a number
of assumptions (consciously or uncon-
takes to roll down the slope. If I nudge it slightly upwards, the sciously) that are worth questioning
time would be longer, if I nudge it slightly downwards the time from time to time.
would be shorter. This introduces a bit of random uncertainty.
2. Another issue is that it’s hard to tell exactly when the ball passes
the bottom of the slope because it moves relatively quickly past
zero. Since this is the moment when I stop the stopwatch, I
would expect this lack of certainty to also introduce some ran-
dom uncertainty.
There are probably more issues/weaknesses to discuss, some

more significant than others, but the main point to learn here is
that there will always be random uncertainties that are revealed by
taking trials – the whole purpose of taking trials is to reveal these random
uncertainties.
When the random uncertainty is larger than the equipment un-
certainty (as in our case above, 2% > 0.6%), then it’s important
to try and identify the random uncertainties and discuss how to reduce
them. If, on the other hand, the random uncertainty is smaller than
the equipment uncertainty, then the random uncertainties are negligi-
ble and the precision of your data is only limited by the precision of your
equipment. In any case, it’s important to remember that the largest
uncertainty always “wins”, small uncertainties "drown in the big ones".
Concept #7: Suggesting improvements
After identifying the causes of the random uncertainties, you al-

ways need to suggest ways of improving those issues/weaknesses.
Here are a few ways in which we could improve our experiment in
order to reduce the mentioned random uncertainties:
1. Instead of releasing the ball by hand, we should devise some sort of

mechanical release or trapdoor mechanism that can release the
ball more smoothly and without any forces involved.
2. Instead of relying on my eyes to detect when the ball passes zero at the
bottom, we should attach a wall of some sort at the bottom so that
when the ball hits the wall it makes a sound and I know when to
stop the timer more consistently.
Alternatively, we could film the entire motion and use video

software to identify the exact frames at which the ball is released
and when it passes the bottom. Another possibility would be to
replace the whole setup with a modern PASCO motion cart that
can wirelessly transfer its position to my computer. This type of
equipment will be explored in our next lesson.
Lesson 2: Problems
1. Time:
(a) Go to this website and measure your reaction time. Estimate

the uncertainty of each measurement, perform 5 trials, work
out the average and the uncertainty of the average.
(b) Measure how long it takes to count off 30 seconds in your
head. Take 5 trials, work out the average, uncertainty, and
percentage uncertainty. Are you systematically counting too
fast or too slow?
2. Spreadsheets. Go to the following data tables, make a copy, and

use the spreadsheet functions to calculate (i) the average, (ii) the
absolute uncertainty of the average (= the standard deviation),
(iii) and the percentage uncertainty of the average. Also, don’t
forget to round off all values appropriately and fix any mistakes
you find!
(a) Spreadsheet 1. (b) Spreadsheet 2.
3. The density of many types of rock is around 2.7 g/cm3 but the
average density of planet Earth is around 5.5 g/cm3 . What con-
clusion can you draw from this?
4. It is essential to be able to convert units when doing calculations,

so please make sure you have developed a method that works
well for you. There are a number of slightly different ways to
approach it, here are my favorites:
Method 1) “Substitution” You simply replace the unit you want
to get rid of with another quantity containing the conversion
factor and new unit that you want to keep, and then you tidy up
the expression, e.g. say a distance, d, is given as
d = 10 miles
but you want to convert it to kilometers. Since 1 mile = 1.6 km

(roughly), you can simply substitute to convert to km:
d = 10 miles = 10(1.6 km) = 16 km
Method 2) “Rates” You construct a multiplying factor in the

form of a rate that converts one unit to the other and then simply
multiply with that. E.g. in the above example, since 1 mile =
1.6 km (roughly), we can construct the multiplying factor
1.6 km km
= 1.6
1 mile mile
and now you simply multiply to cancel out the unit miles:
d = 10 miles = 10 · 1.6 km = 16 km

miles
mile

Both methods should of course give you the same result. Also,
don’t forget that powers of ten are often used as prefixes to ad-
just the size of a given unit. The substitution method works
wonders in those cases, you simply substitute the prefix with its
power of ten and tidy up the expression, e.g.
23.4 mm = 23.4(10−3 m) = 0.0234 m
or
32 km2 = 32(103 m)2 = 32(106 m2 ) = 32 × 106 m2
Now try yourself:
(a) Convert 20 ft (20 feet) to meters. (1 ft = 0.3048 m).

(b) Convert 1 year to seconds. (Notice that this is roughly π ×
107 seconds :)
(c) What is 300 mm in nanometers?
(d) Convert 90 km/h to m/s.
(e) What is 1 g/cm3 expressed in kg/m3 ?
5. Analog scales. It was mentioned in the text that the uncertainty

of a digital scale is typically just the smallest unit that can be
displayed. For analog devices, it’s a bit more tricky. Here we need
to take the spacing of the lines into account too. The usual rule is
to take half the smallest unit as the absolute uncertainty but it really
depends on the spacing on the scale! Below are a few pictures of
analog scales. Determine the best estimate of the measurement,
the absolute uncertainty, and the percentage uncertainty:
(a) A protractor measuring in degrees:

(b) See figure 8. Locating the edge of a piece of yellow paper
using a normal ruler. A normal ruler typically has a smallest
unit of 1 millimeter, 1 mm = 1 × 10−3 m = 0.1 cm:
6. Length: When measuring the length of an object, you often need

to measure two positions and then find the difference between
those two position measurements. Since both measurements are
uncertain the overall absolute uncertainty of the length measurement
is the sum of the two absolute uncertainties (if you consider the min-
imum and maximum possible lengths then this makes sense).
Figure 8: Locating the edge of a piece

of yellow paper.
This is one example of ’error propagation’: When performing

calculations with measured quantities, the uncertainty ’propa-
gates’ (= travels) through the calculations. So if the two position
measurements are
x1 ± δx1 and x2 ± δx2 ,
then the length will be
L = x2 − x1
with an absolute uncertainty
δL = δx1 + δx2
For example, if
x1 = 0.0 ± 0.5 mm and x2 = 7.5 ± 0.5 mm
then
L = 7.5 ± 1.0 mm
Perform the following measurements, estimate the equipment
uncertainty and calculate the percentage uncertainty of each one:
(a) With a normal ruler: The width of a sheet of A4 paper.

(Rulers and paper are behind the whiteboard)
(b) With a normal ruler: The width of your pen

(c) With a normal ruler: The width of your laptop charger wire
(d) Explain why the above three measurements get more and
more imprecise.
7. Mass: Use a digital scale to measure the mass of the following

items. Again, estimate the equipment uncertainty and calculate
the percentage uncertainty:
(a) A sheet of A4 paper.

(b) Five randomly chosen 50 g masses from a 0.5 kg mass
hanger set. Work out the average and percentage uncertainty
of the average.
(c) 1 L is per definition 1 dm3 . How many liters is one m3 ? And
how many liters is one cm3 ?
(d) Measure the mass of ONE drop of water (use a plastic drop-
per). The density of water is 1 g/cm3 . What is the volume of
ONE drop of water in mL?
(e) Measure the mass of 50 DROPS of water and use that to
calculate the mass of ONE drop of water - what is the volume
of ONE drop of water according to this measurement? Is this
a more precise measurement than (e)?
8. The seven base SI units: There are seven fundamental (base) SI

units. Explore this link and learn about them.
Answers to all the exercises.
Lesson 2 Quiz
"In the sciences, the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an
individual man."
— Galieo Galilei. Taken from Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo by Stillman Drake (p. 134 - 135), 1957.
Lesson 3: Position, displacement, and distance

When you throw a tennis ball up into the air, it typically takes less
than a second for it to return (unless you throw it very hard). Since
it’s difficult to notice things that happen very quickly, it would
make sense to slow things down a bit. The Italian scientist Galileo
Galilei thought of doing this by rolling objects down slopes instead
of letting them fall vertically. He noticed that it was easier to measure
things more carefully in this way, and he thereby demonstrated one
of the important aspects of the scientific method: All good science
is based on carefully collecting precise data and paying attention to the
emerging patterns. Figure 1: Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
was an Italian astronomer, physicist
Let’s follow in Galileo’s footsteps and perform an experiment
and engineer, who has been called
with a cart rolling down a slope. We’ll use this simple setup to the "father of the scientific method".
introduce a few important concepts. I’ll make a slightly slanted Galileo studied speed, velocity, gravity,
free fall, the principle of relativity, iner-
slope (a PASCO track) and let a cart (a wireless PASCO cart) roll tia, projectile motion and also worked
down from rest. It will be slanted as little as possible, just enough in applied science and technology.
His contributions to observational
for the cart to roll down on its own. When I "throw" the cart up the
astronomy include the telescopic con-
slope and see it come down again, you will notice that the motion firmation of the phases of Venus and
is very similar to throwing a tennis ball straight up in the air - it the observation of the four largest
moons of Jupiter. (Wikipedia)
just happens much slower.
Concept #1: Position
Figure 2: A cart is about to roll down a

slope.
An important aspect of the scientific method is to clearly define

what is being measured. The first variable we’ll define is position: 1
We will also be keeping track of
time in these experiments, and the
Position is the location of an object relative to a coordinate axis.
time-keeping devices are included in
The physical coordinate axes used in this context are often referred the term "reference frame". In special
to as a reference frame1 . Since the cart is rolling down the slope relativity this becomes very significant
because it turns out that time and
along a straight line, we only need one spatial coordinate axis to space are not independent quantities –
specify exactly where it is and this case is therefore called one- they are in fact mixed up in a unified
spacetime, which we often loosely
dimensional (1D) motion. Later you will see examples of two- and
refer to as the ’fabric of reality’. This is
three-dimensional motion (2D, 3D), and in those cases you need a four-dimensional reality (4D).
two and three coordinate axes.
Imagine the axis being parallel to the slope with its zero (the
origin) at the point where the cart is released, see figure ??. We
often use the variable x for position, but we can also use different
letters (e.g. y, z, h, d, D, s, etc.) all depending on the situation. Let nano n 10−9
the direction of increasing position be down the slope. That will micro µ 10−6
milli m 10−3
be the positive direction (an arrow tip indicates that). By mark- centi c 10−2
ing distances of 1 m, 2 m, etc. on the axis, together with smaller kilo k 103
mega M 106
fractions of those distances (e.g. cm = 1/100 m = 10−2 m and
giga G 109
mm = 1/1000 m = 10−3 m), we get a commonly used length scale.
Table 1: Don’t forget these common
prefixes that we use in science to
Concept #2: Mathematical modelling modify the size of a unit. They are
very important to learn!
Galileo apparently used his pulse (or a water clock) to measure
how time passed but we will use the PASCO SparkVue software.
Make sure you have it installed on your computer by downloading
this file. Figure ?? shows a screenshot of the position measurements
of the cart.
Figure 3: A table and plot of data

points showing how the position
What shape do the points seem to follow? Can you express that depends on time for a PASCO cart
shape as a mathematical equation? When I "throw" the cart gently rolling gently down a slope. The
sampling frequency has been set to 20
up the slope what shape does the position vs. time graph have? Hz which means 20 measurements are
The data points resemble the plot shown in figure ??. Notice that taken each second or 1 measurement
time is the variable on the horizontal axis and position is the vari- every 0.05 second.
able on the vertical axis. So the vertical axis corresponds to the

position coordinate axis from figure ?? parallel to the slope - this
can sometimes be confusing for students.
Figure 4: A plot of data points show-

ing how position depends on time for
a cart rolling gently down a slope.
You might get the idea that the points lie on a parabola (with
the vertex at the origin). This means the position of the cart can be
described by a quadratic equation with the form:
x = At2
where A is some constant that’s needs to be adjusted to a particular

value to fit the data. Such constants are called parameters in sci-
ence. This equation represents a mathematical model that describes
the data we have just collected. You will go through the process
of mathematical modelling yourself later, but it’s worth noting al-
ready now that physics (and natural science in general) is all about 2
Climate models are very relevant
models that scientists are busy work-
finding accurate mathematical models that describe and explain the
ing on these days. Read more about
world around us.2 those here.
Figure 5: An example of a position vs.

time motion graph for a cart rolling
gently down a slope. Being slightly
more mathematical we would call this
the graph of the position function x (t).
In figure ?? the data is shown together with the graph of

1 2
x= t = 0.1t2
10
which seems to model the data very well. Hence the parameter
A can be said to have a value of 0.1 (we’ll worry about the units
of this parameter later). The graph in figure 4 is called a motion
graph because it describes how one aspect of the cart’s motion
(the position) is changing over time. In slightly more mathematical 3
This is the familiar function notation
terms, position is said to be a function of time and we could use the and should be read "x of t". If you are
not familiar with the function notation
function notation,
"f of x", f ( x ), then you should really
x (t) = 0.1t2 , study some more mathematics. The
function concept was actually invented
to emphasise that3 . For any given time value, this function gives us to express causal relationships between
the position of the cart at that time. quantities in science.
Concept #3: Displacement and distance
You can clearly see from the motion graph that the position is
changing over time (not a big surprise of course). Truly understand-
ing motion is being able to describe this change accurately, so let’s do
4
We often use subscripts to label
that: From one given instant to another, say t1 to t2 , the position different values of a given variable.
changes by the amount4 The notation x1 where 1 is a subscript
is just to say that this is the first
∆x ≡ (later position) − (earlier position) = x2 − x1 position I’m considering, whereas x2
is a second position. The subscripts
and this change in position is called a displacement (the symbol do not necessarily correspond to a
value of time, so for example x1 is not
≡ means “equal to per definition”). We have here introduced the necessarily the same as the position
∆ notation which is used a lot in physics: It stands for “change in” value when one second has passed:
and it’s always defined as a “later” quantity minus an “earlier” x1 6 = x (1) (most often)
quantity. The order matters: If you get a positive number the quantity
has increased, if it’s negative it has decreased.
Figure 6: Visualizing the displacement,

∆x (the change in position), from time
1 s to 3 s.
For example, at time values (read off on the horizontal axis)

t1 = 1 s and t2 = 3 s the cart’s position is (read off on the vertical
axis or calculate from the model) x1 = 0.1 m and x2 = 0.9 m. Hence
we can say it has undergone a displacement (a “change in x”) of
∆x ≡ x2 − x1 = 0.9 m − 0.1 m = 0.8 m
during the time interval that runs from 1 s to 3 s (∆t = 2 s). These
details can be visualised on the motion graph as shown in figure ??.
Let’s consider another example of motion to practice using these
new words we’ve introduced: Imagine Maxwell walking along
a straight road. In the picture below a coordinate axis is shown,
together with his position at three different times. A tree is used to
define where the origin of the reference frame is.
What is Maxwell’s position at time t1 ? It is 5 m. What is his

displacement ∆x from time t1 to t2 ? It is
∆x ≡ x2 − x1 = 7 m − 5 m = 2 m
What is his position at time t3 ? It is −10 m. What is his displace-

ment from t2 to t3 ? It is
∆x ≡ x3 − x2 = −10 m − (7 m) = −17 m
(We’ll discuss what this being negative means in a minute.) Assume

Maxwell goes straight from the tree, through x1 to x2 , turns around
immediately and then walks directly to x3 . What was the total
distance travelled by Maxwell in going from the tree to position
x3 ? Distance expresses the actual length covered in going from
one position to another, and in this case Maxwell travels a total of
24 meters (= 7 meters to the right and then 17 meters to the left).
Notice how position, displacement and distance are all different concepts
with sometimes very different values!
Try to draw a possible position vs. time graph for Maxwell’s
motion (you can make whatever assumptions you like, as long as Figure 7: Here is a posible motion
the motion graph is consistent with the above three data points). graph for Maxwell’s walk. The posi-
tion vs. time motion graph can’t fail
Discuss any possible limitations to the motion graph. If you want to the "vertical line test": Draw a vertical
know the shape of the motion graph in greater detail what do you line and it can at most touch the mo-
need to do? (That’s right, collect more data!) tion graph once because it’s impossible
to be at two places at once! There is
one other important limitation - do
you know what it is?
Concept #4: Vectors and scalars
Position and displacement are examples of vector quantities. A

vector quantity has a magnitude (= a size) and a direction. For
example, Maxwell’s position is the quantity that describes how far
he is from the tree (a magnitude), but it also indicates whether he
is to the right or to the left of the tree (a direction). Since being to
the right of the tree is positive on the axis, the position x1 = +5 m
means that he is 5 m (magnitude) to the right (positive direction)

of the tree, whereas x3 = −10 m means he is 10 m (magnitude)
to the left (negative direction) of the tree. Displacement is also a
vector quantity because it tells you how far apart two positions are
(a magnitude) and it gives the direction from the earlier position
to the later position (a direction). For example, when Maxwell
displaces himself from x1 to x2 , the displacement is
∆x ≡ x2 − x1 = +2 m
which means there is 2 m between positions x1 = 5 m and x2 =

7 m (magnitude) and since the displacement is positive we know
that going from x1 to x2 is moving to the right (in the direction of
increasing position). When he displaces himself from x2 to x3 , his
displacement is
∆x = x3 − x2 = −10 m − (7 m) = −17 m
showing that there is 17 m between those two positions (magni-

tude), but the negative sign indicates that in going from x2 to x3
he moves to the left (in the direction of decreasing position). The
magnitude of a vector is normally expressed using the absolute
value notation, e.g. if you only want to emphasise the magnitude
we write
| x3 | = 10 m and |∆x | = 17 m
Vectors are also often drawn as arrows as seen in figure ??. In
that figure, position vectors are shown in blue, displacement vectors
in purple. Position vectors always point from the origin to the posi-
tion, while displacement vectors always point from one position to
another. Vectors are most useful when describing motion in more
than one dimension and much of physics is described using the
language of vector calculus which you will eventually learn if you
study any physics-related subjects at university. Vectors are also a
standard part of any high-school mathematics curriculum.
Figure 8: Vectors are very often

drawn as arrows, although for one-
dimensional motion we almost never
bother do that.
Distance is an example of a scalar quantity. A scalar quantity is
defined only by its magnitiude (= a size). Since distance is just a
number telling us the total length that something has travelled then
it is a scalar quantity. Other examples of scalar quantities are tem-
perature and mass: My mass has a magnitude of around 75 kg and
that’s it. There are no directional aspects to that quantity. The tem-
perature at a point in this room is perhaps 25 ◦ C and that’s again
just a magnitude. Notice that even though celsius temperatures can
take on positive and negative values, that doesn’t mean it’s a vector
quantity. A physical quantity must have some spatial directional
aspect to it in order to be a proper vector quantity.
Lesson 3: Problems
1. Draw the motion graph of a car that is driving with constant

speed in one direction. If it helps, assume a speed of 20 m/s,
make a table of positions at certain time values, and plot the
points.
2. Imagine throwing a tennis ball straight up in the air. Let the

origin be the position where it leaves your hand and say up is
the positive direction. Let the position coordinate be labelled y Figure 9: Cars are built to move!
and measure length in centimeters (cm).
(a) Draw a suitable reference frame and mark off positions cor-
responding to y0 = it leaves your hand (which is 100 cm above
the ground), y1 = it reaches maximum height of 200 cm above
your hand, y2 = it passes your hand (the origin) on the way
down, y3 = it hits the ground.
(b) What is the displacement from y0 to y1 ? From y1 to y2 ?
(c) What is the displacement from y0 to y2 ? What is the total
distance the ball has travelled from y0 to y2 ? Why are they
different?
(d) What is the overall displacement from y1 to y3 ? What is
position y3 ?
(e) Sketch a position vs. time motion graph for this motion.
3. Consider the mathematical model x (t) = 0.1t2 shown in figure 4. Figure 10: You can learn a lot from
throwing a tennis ball up into the air!
(a) Use the model to predict the position of the cart at times
1 s, 2.5 s, and 100 s. Do all the answers make sense, are they
realistic predictions? Why, why not? Models are useful, but
they also have limitations and they are only as good as the
assumptions and data that went into building them.
(b) The parameter A in x = At2 has units because x and t have
units. What is the unit of A? (Hint: Rearrange the equation to
isolate A and then think about the units of x and t.)
4. When something is thrown up and sideways close to the sur-

face of the Earth it follows a parabolic trajectory (provided air
resistance is insignificant). This is called projectile motion and
it is an example of two-dimensional motion. Imagine a particle
launched up and to the right from the origin of the Cartesian
plane. The position of the particle at any instant is given by two
coordinates, an x and a y coordinate, so there are now two po-
sition functions x (t) and y(t) to keep track of. We normally use
the symbol ~r to denote the overall position vector and we write The notation shown on the left is
called a row vector, on the right is
! shown a column vector. It doesn’t
x (t) really matter which notation you use
~r (t) = ( x (t), y(t)) or ~r (t) =
y(t) – it will depend on the given context
and who you work with.
The black curve below is the trajectory of our particle. Four

position vectors with the following coordinates (all values in
meters) are shown below:
~r1 = (1, 3), ~r2 = (2, 4), ~r3 = (3, 3), and ~r4 = (3.5, 1.75),
Figure 11: An example of projectile

motion.
5
The technical term for this graph is a
parametric plot. Each point ( x (t), y(t))
corresponds to the position of the
Note that this is not a position vs. time motion graph5 . This is a particle at a given instant. Parametric
graph showing the actual trajectory in 2D space, with the hor- plots don’t have to satisfy the vertical
line test (can you see why?), e.g. the
izontal axis being the x-position (not the time) and the vertical graph below is a valid representation
axis being the y-position. of two-dimenionsal motion.
(a) What is the magnitude of ~r2 ? (Hint: It is a measure of how far

away the particle is from the origin - remember Pythagoras?) Is this
magnitude less than, equal to, or greater than the distance it
travelled from the origin to ~r2 ?
(b) A displacement vector ∆~r from position ~r2 to ~r3 is shown in
the diagram. Use the formula
∆~r = (∆x, ∆y)
to calculate the coordinates of this displacement vector. Do the

signs of ∆x and ∆y make sense? Figure 12: This parametric plot shows
a particle that starts at the green point
(c) What is the horizontal displacement, ∆x, from ~r1 to ~r3 ? What and ends up at the red point. None
is the vertical displacement, ∆y? of the axes shown here is a time axis,
they are both position axes.
5. Here’s one example of three-dimensional motion: An ant crawls
along the edges of a cube with side length 10 m. It moves from
one corner to the opposite corner along 3 edges.
(a) Draw the overall displacement vector and determine its

magnitude and direction.
(b) Calculate the overall distance travelled.
6. A helix has the shape of a spiral staircase (see the figure below).
DNA molecules are made up of a double-helix structure and
when charged particles move in magnetic fields they follow
helical trajectories.
(a) Imagine the helix shown is the trajectory of a particle. It

begins its motion at position (1, 0, 0) and a short time later
it is at position (0, 1, π/2). Calculate the magnitude of the
displacement vector between these two positions.
(b) The particle disintegrates at position (1, 0, 4π ). Estimate the
total distance travelled. (Hint: A helix lies on the surface of a
cylinder. What happens when you unfold a cylinder?)
Answers to all the questions.
Lesson 3 Quiz
"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated
life is."
— John von Neumann
Lesson 4: Speed and velocity

The previous lesson was all about position, displacement and dis-
tance. This lesson will be about speed and velocity.
Concept #1: Average speed and average velocity
When the position of an object changes we want to accurately quan-

tify this change. You probably already know the simple definition
of average speed which is simply the total distance travelled di-
vided by the time it takes:
total distance
average speed ≡
time taken
This definition, however, is not particularly useful. It doesn’t say
anything about how the speed or the direction of motion might
have changed during this time. We need a better concept to work
with and here is a start: The average velocity of an object moving
from position x1 to x2 is defined as
displacement ∆x x − x1
v≡ ≡ = 2
time taken ∆t t2 − t1
It’s important to notice that direction now is involved since the Figure 1: Velocity is a vector quantity
displacement in the numerator is a vector quantity. Hence average because it is defined in terms of the
displacement vector. ∆x and v are
velocity is also a vector quantity and it points in the same direction two vectors that always point in the
as the displacement (see figure 1). Average velocity is a measure of same direction, but their magnitudes
how fast and in which direction, on average, the position is changing. can’t be compared because they are
measured in different units.
Let’s apply the above definition to our original experiment, the
cart rolling down the slope. Consider the starting position, the
position after one second, and the position after two seconds, see
figure 2.
Figure 2: The cart is rolling down

a slope. Here it is shown at three
different positions.
In the first second the cart undergoes a displacement of ∆x =

0.10 m which is pointing down the slope. According to our new
definition, the average velocity during this time interval is
∆x 0.10 m − 0.00 m 0.10 m

v≡ = = = 0.10 m/s (down the slope)
∆t 1s−0s 1s
Note that the unit of velocity is meters per second, m/s, and the
velocity is pointing down the slope because so is the displacement
(the position is increasing). In the next second, the cart undergoes a
larger displacement, hence the average velocity in that time interval
is larger than before:
∆x 0.40 m − 0.10 m 0.30 m

v≡ = = = 0.30 m/s (down the slope)
∆t 2s−1s 1s
Let’s see how we can interpret these two average velocities
graphically on the motion graph, consider figure 3.
Figure 3: The average velocity is the

slope of a straight line segment that
joins two positions in a position vs.
time plot.
It should be clear that the average velocity, as calculated above,

represents the slope (gradient) of the line segment between two
points on the graph. The fact that the values are positive indicate
that the position is increasing and hence it is moving down the
slope (because that is the direction of increasing position). Hence
we arrive at the important understanding: Velocity can be interpreted
as the slope of a straight line in a position vs. time plot.
Let’s quickly check your understanding of this: Use figure 3 to
calculate the average velocity during the time interval from 2 s to
3 s. And again from 3 s to 4 s. What did you get? (You should get
0.5 m/s and 0.7 m/s. Do you notice any pattern in how the average
velocities are changing? More on that in our next lesson.)
Concept #2: Instantaneous velocity
We now come to a very important point in our understanding

of motion. In fact, this point is the crucial point (it also happens
to be the crucial point of understanding calculus which is not a

coincidence since Newton invented calculus to understand motion):
The velocities we calculated above are all average velocities. They
don’t tell us the velocity of the cart at a given instant, they only tell
us what the velocity was on average during a finite time interval. The
cart, however, is continuously changing its velocity as it rolls down
the slope, so during any time interval the velocity is not constant:
It’s moving a bit slower at the beginning and a bit faster at the end.
Our current definition of velocity does not take that continuous
change into account. What we really want is a definition of velocity that
tells us what the instantaneous velocity is at any time value (any given
moment in time). One of Newton’s1 great accomplishments was to 1
And probably Leibniz’s too. And
solve this puzzle. This is how it works: possibly even others – history is not
always a fair judge in assigning credit!
Say we want to find the instantaneous velocity at time t = 1 s.
The average velocity over the time interval from 1 s to 2 s (0.30 m/s)
is not going to be an accurate measure of that (it’s too fast since
the cart had time to pick up some more speed), but if we make the
time interval shorter, then the velocity won’t change that much. E.g. if we
look at the time interval from 1.0 s to 1.5 s, then the cart moves from
position 0.10 m to 0.225 m and we get an average velocity of (see
figure 4):
∆x 0.225 m − 0.10 m
v≡ = = 0.25 m/s
∆t 1.5 s − 1.0 s
Indeed a slightly smaller velocity compared to the 0.3 m/s before.
Figure 4: By shortening the time

interval we get a slightly better ap-
proximation to the instantaneous
velocity at t = 1 s.
But it’s still an average velocity! We want the instantaneous ve-

locity at a single moment in time (when t = 1 s). What can we
do? Well, we could continue making the time interval smaller and
smaller. Here are the average velocities for time intervals of length
0.3 s, 0.1 s, 0.05 s, 0.01 s, 0.0001 s and 0.000001 s:

∆x 0.069 m
v≡ = = 0.23 m/s
∆t 0.3 s
∆x 0.021 m
v≡ = = 0.21 m/s
∆t 0.1 s
∆x 0.010 m
v≡ = = 0.205 m/s
∆t 0.05 s
∆x 0.0020 m
v≡ = = 0.201 m/s
∆t 0.01 s
∆x 0.000 020 m
v≡ = = 0.200 01 m/s
∆t 0.000 1 s
∆x 0.000 000 20 m
v≡ = = 0.200 000 1 m/s
∆t 0.000 001 s
In figure 5 I have drawn the line segments corresponding to the
first four average velocities listed above.
Figure 5: A smaller part of the graph

shown in figure 4. As we zoom in on
the graph, the motion graph looks
more straight.
There are a couple of very important things to notice:
• The line segments get shorter and shorter, because ∆x and ∆t are
getting smaller and smaller.
• The magnitudes of the average velocities seem to approach the

value 0.2000 . . . m/s.
• As we zoom in on the motion graph it looks more and more like

a straight line, and the line segments come closer and closer to
being parallel with the motion graph.
• All velocities are still average velocities!
Our findings seem to suggest that the instantaneous velocity at

t = 1.0 s should be 0.200 . . . m/s, a value we can come as close to
as possible, as long as we make the time interval small enough. It’s
tempting to make it as small as possible – zero – but then we run
into a problem: If ∆t = 0 then ∆x = 0 and you can’t calculate an
average velocity!
∆x 0
v≡ = = ??
∆t 0
Newton was among the first people to truly understand how to 2
This sticky point really confused the
resolve this issue2 and the basic idea is to define the instantaneous ancient Greek thinkers. Some even
interpreted this by claiming motion
velocity to be the value that the slopes approach as ∆t approaches 0. In
was an illusion, e.g. "In the arrow
Newton’s own words: paradox, Zeno states that for motion
to occur, an object must change the
“... by the ultimate ratio of evanescent [= ’disappearing’] quantities is position which it occupies. He gives
to be understood the ratio of the quantities, not before they vanish, an example of an arrow in flight. He
nor after, but with which they vanish.” states that in any one instant of time,
the arrow is neither moving to where
Defining a quantity in terms of a limit is the fundamental idea be- it is, nor to where it is not. It cannot
move to where it is not, because no
hind differential calculus. You will learn much more about that in time elapses for it to move there; it
your future mathematics course, but remember you heard about it cannot move to where it is, because
it is already there. In other words,
first in your physics class! The instantaneous velocity is also called at every instant of time there is no
the derivative of the position function and we use the following no- motion occurring. If everything is
tation (don’t be intimidated, it’s just different notation for the same motionless at every instant, and time
is entirely composed of instants, then
thing): motion is impossible." (Wikipedia)
∆x dx How would you explain to Zeno that
vinstantaneous ≡ lim ≡ ≡ x 0 (t) ≡ ẋ (t)
∆t→0 ∆t dt he is wrong? These paradoxes were
first resolved with the mathematical
"lim" stands for limit, and "∆t → 0" is read "as ∆t approaches concept of a limit in the 17th century.
0". We read x 0 (t) as "x prime of t" and ẋ (t) as "x dot of t". The
magnitude of instantaneous velocity is the quantity we refer to as
instantaneous speed,
instantaneous speed = |vinstantaneous |
This is in fact the concept most of us have in mind when we say

"speed", so from now on we will omit the word "instantaneous".
Likewise, the word "velocity" will now simply refer to instanta-
neous velocity, since it is the most useful quantity to work with. If
we for some reason are working with average quantities, then we
will remember to label them as "average" to avoid any confusion.
Concept #3: Tangents
The definition of instantaneous velocity leads us to a more rigorous

Figure 6: A tangent to a curve is a
definition of what a tangent is: A tangent is a straight line that just straight line that only touches the
touches a curve at a single point and has a slope that is equal to curve at a single point (in a sufficiently
small interval surrounding the point).
the derivative at that point. So if you zoom in around the point
Here are shown three green tangents.
of tangency, the tangent line and the curve will become more and Two of them eventually meet the curve
more indistinguishable. The slope of this tangent is what we mean again when you go far enough away
from the tangent point.
by ’the slope of the curve’, see figure 6.
The goal in this physics course is not to teach you all the details
of calculus, so when you are asked to find an instantaneous velocity
in this course, you will be expected to rely on the technique of
manually drawing a tangent to a graph and calculating the slope of
the tangent by picking two points on the tangent line.
Our final conclusion is the following: The instantaneous velocity at
a particular time value is equal to the slope of the motion graph drawn in a
position vs. time diagram. Instantaneous velocity is a vector quantity, and
the magnitude is what we call instantaneous speed. When using the terms
speed and velocity we often mean the instantaneous quantities.
When you eventually learn differential calculus in your math-
ematics class (it’s standard in all high-school curricula), you will
spend a lot of time learning rules for how you can calculate deriva-
tives of functions in a quick way. For example, if a function is
f (t) = 2t3 − 7t2 + t + 5
then the derivate function (the function that tells you what the
slope of the tangent to the curve is at any given point) can very
easily be written down immediately using a simple algorithm:
f 0 (t) = 6t2 − 14t + 1
Can you work out what the algorithm is?
Lesson 4: Problems
1. Calculate the following average speeds:
(a) The fastest people can run 100 m in roughly 10 s. What is

their average speed?
(b) Mr. Mumm’s personal best is running 5.0 km in 23 minutes
and 51 seconds. What is his average running speed? (give
your answer in m/s and km/h)
(c) A starting pistol is fired in front of a microphone and the
sound starts a timer which counts in milliseconds (= ms).
When the sound reaches another microphone 12.0 m away the
timer stops at 35.0 ms. What is the speed of sound in m/s?
(d) The Earth moves in a circular orbit around the Sun. The
radius of the orbit is roughly 150 million kilometers and it
takes around 365.25 days. Use this information to calculate the
average speed of the Earth in units of km/s. (Note: The Earth
actually moves in an elliptical orbit, and its speed changes
slightly)
(e) It takes light around 0.134 seconds to go around the Earth
once. If the radius of the Earth is 6.37 · 103 km, then what
is the speed of light? Give your answer to three significant
digits.
2. A ball displaces itself from x1 = 3.4 m to x2 = −4.2 m during the

time interval running from t1 = 3.0 s to t2 = 6.1 s.
(a) What is its average velocity? Is this a vector quantity – if yes,

in which direction is it pointing?
(b) What is the magnitude of its average velocity? Discuss
whether this is the same as the average speed.
3. The diagram below shows the movement of a small smoke parti-

cle as it goes from A to B.
(a) Use a ruler and the scale shown to find

i. The total distance travelled in going from A to B,
ii. The magnitude of the displacement from A to B.
(b) If it took 0.20 s to travel from A to B calculate
i. The average speed,
ii. The magnitude the average velocity.
(c) Why is there such a big difference between the two answers
in (b)?
(d) The gas molecules in the room you are sitting in have av-
erage speeds of around 500 m/s. This is around the same
wind speed as a T8 typhoon in Hong Kong - why is that not
something we notice?
4. A car starts from rest, drives around for 10 minutes and then
comes to rest again at its original position.
(a) What was the average velocity during that time interval?
Does your answer make sense, is it useful?
(b) Say the total distance travelled was 12 km. Calculate the car’s
average speed in km/h.
(c) Is it possible for the instantaneous velocity to have been con-
stant throughout this motion? What about the instantaneous
speed?
(d) In general, is it possible for a car to have a constant instanta-
neous velocity? Is it possible to have a constant instantaneous
speed and a changing instantaneous velocity at the same time?
5. The diagram below is the motion graph of our cart rolling down
the slope. The tangent lines at time values 1 s, 2 s, 3 s, and 4 s
have been drawn. Calculate the instantaneous velocities at these
time values by calculating the slope of these tangent lines (pick
two points on the tangent line and just use "rise over run").
6. The vector nature of velocity is most clearly seen in two and

three dimensional motion. Recall from lesson 3 that a two-
dimensional position vector has two components:
~r (t) = ( x (t), y(t))
and likewise a two-dimensional displacement vector:
∆~r = (∆x, ∆y)
Therefore, average velocity in two dimensions also has two com-

ponents:
∆~r ∆x ∆y

~v ≡ = ,
∆t ∆t ∆t
Figure 7 shows an average velocity vector for the case of pro-

jectile motion. Between the two shown positions there is a dis-
Figure 7: An average velocity vector

pointing along the displacement
between two positions.
placement vector, and the average velocity vector points in the

same direction as that. The velocity vector has a magnitude that
tells us the constant speed required to move between those two
positions if it moved along the displacement vector.
(a) If
~r1 = (2 m, 4 m), ~r2 = (3 m, 3 m), and ∆t = 0.2 s
then calculate the magnitude and direction of the average
velocity vector.
The instantaneous velocity vector at the first position is obtained

by imagining the second position vector coming closer and closer
to the first position vector. In that limit, the instantaneous veloc-
ity vector
∆~r

d~r dx dy
~vinstantaneous ≡ lim ≡ = , ≡ ~r 0 (t) ≡ ~r˙ (t)
∆t→0 ∆t dt dt dt
becomes tangent to the trajectory as shown in figure 8. Hence in-

stantaneous velocity vectors are always tangent to the trajectories
of particles in two dimensions.
Figure 8: The instantaneous veloc-

ity vector is always tangent to the
trajectory of the particle.
The extension to three-dimensional motion is straightforward

and we come to the same conclusions as before:
∆~r

d~r dx dy dz
~vinstantaneous ≡ lim ≡ = , , ≡ ~r 0 (t) ≡ ~r˙ (t)
∆t→0 ∆t dt dt dt dt
Learning how to describe motion in this way is your first step

into the world of vector calculus, an important mathematical tool
used by all physicists.
Lesson 4 Quiz
"At present it is the purpose of our Author merely to investigate and to demonstrate some of the properties of
accelerated motion (whatever the cause of this acceleration may be)."
– Galileo Galilei, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
Lesson 5: Acceleration
So far we have talked about position, displacement, distance, speed
and velocity. Now we come to the most important concept of them
all, acceleration. Acceleration plays a key role in Newton’s 2nd law
of motion, so it’s important to understand it properly.
Concept #1: Average acceleration
In the previous lesson we saw how to find the instantaneous ve-

locity of our cart rolling down the slope. In figure 1, I’ve plotted
how the this instantaneous velocity changes over time (I’ve used the
values obtained from exercise 5 in lesson 4):
Figure 1: A plot showing how the

instantaneous velocity depends on
time for a cart rolling gently down a
slope. The data points were obtained
from the position vs. time graph by
finding the slope of tangent lines at
given time values.
We are now going to perform the same analysis for velocity as

we did for position. In figure 1, time is still the variable on the
horizontal axis, but now velocity is the variable on the vertical
axis. It’s clear to everyone (I hope) that the points seem to lie on a
straight line through the origin, so the velocity seems to be directly
proportional to time:
v = Bt
where B is a new parameter. This equation represents a mathemat-
ical model that describes how the velocity changes over time. In
figure 2 I’ve plotted the data together with the graph of the func-
tion
v(t) = 0.2t
Figure 2: A velocity vs. time motion

graph for a cart rolling gently down a
slope. A mathematician would call this
the graph of the velocity function v(t).
As you can see, this function models the data very well, hence a
good value for the parameter B is 0.2 (we’ll worry about the units
of this parameter later). The graph in figure 2 describes the motion
of the cart going down the slope, but instead of showing how the
position changes over time (position vs. time), it is showing how
the instantaneous velocity changes over time (velocity vs. time).
It is crucial to appreciate this fine detail, so let me emphasise that
one more time: We are describing the motion of a cart rolling down a
slope and for this motion we now have two motion graphs, one describing
position vs. time and one describing velocity vs. time (both instantaneous
quantities). The graphs are related because they both describe the same
motion, but they look different because they are describing two different
quantities - one is the position, the other is the velocity. Here are the two
motion graphs side by side:
Just as the position is changing, you can clearly see that velocity
is also changing over time - just in a different way (linear rather
than quadratic). Let’s investigate this change in more detail: From
one instant to another, say t1 to t2 , the change in velocity is given by
∆v ≡ (later velocity) − (earlier velocity) = v2 − v1
For example, at time values (read off on the horizontal axis) t1 = 1 s

and t2 = 4 s the cart’s velocity is (read off on the vertical axis or
calculate from the model) v1 = 0.2 m/s and v2 = 0.8 m/s. Hence
the cart has changed its velocity by ∆v = 0.6 m/s (a positive change
implies an increase in velocity) during the time interval that runs
from t1 = 1 s to t2 = 4 s (∆t = 3 s). These details can of course be
visualised on the velocity vs. time motion graph as shown in figure
3.
Figure 3: Visualizing the change in

velocity from time 1 s to 4 s.
And just like what we did in the previous lesson, we want to ac-
curately quantify this change. We therefore introduce the following
definition: The average acceleration of an object that changes its
instantaneous velocity from v1 to v2 is defined as
change in velocity ∆v v − v1
a≡ ≡ = 2
time taken ∆t t2 − t1
Figure 4: Acceleration is a vector
It’s important to notice that acceleration is also a vector quantity quantity because it is defined in terms
of the change in velocity vector. ∆v
and it points in the same direction as the change in velocity (see and a are two vectors that always
figure 4). Average acceleration is a measure of how fast and in which point in the same direction, but their
direction the velocity is changing (on average). magnitudes can’t be compared because
they are measured in different units.
Let’s apply the above definition to our experiment. If we look at
the change in velocity from 1 s to 4 s, it shows that the velocity is
increasing at a rate of
∆v 0.8 m/s − 0.2 m/s 0.6 m/s
a≡ = = = 0.2 m/s2
∆t 4s−1s 3s
over that time interval. Note that the unit for acceleration is me-
ters per second squared1 , m/s2 . Try to internalise what this really 1
It’s important to realize that you are
means: The velocity is changing by 0.2 m/s for every second that just doing algebra with the units:
passes. It starts off being 0 m/s, one second later it is 0.2 m/s, two m/s m m
= = 2
s s·s s
seconds later it is 0.4 m/s, etc. An object is accelerating when it is
changing its velocity. Also, note that the acceleration is positive when
the velocity is increasing, while the acceleration is negative when
the velocity is decreasing. It should be clear that the average accel-
eration, as calculated here, represents the slope of the line segment
indicated on figure 5 below. Hence, we arrive at the important con-
clusion: Acceleration can be interpreted as the slope of a straight line
in a velocity vs. time plot. In this particular case, since the velocity
graph is already a straight line, this slope is going to be the same
no matter which two velocities we pick, hence we conclude that
the acceleration for the cart rolling down the slope has a constant
value equal to 0.2 m/s2 . In other words, the velocity is constantly
increasing by 0.2 m/s every second.
Figure 5: The slope of this velocity

vs. time graph is constant, hence the
acceleration is constant. The cart is
increasing its velocity by 0.2 m/s every
second.
Since the acceleration of our cart has the constant value 0.2 m/s2 ,
the graph of acceleration vs. time is very easy to draw, it’s simply a
horizontal line. Putting all the motion graphs side by side, we get
the full picture:
It is again crucial to understand that the three motion graphs

shown above all represent the same motion. They are related, but they
are different because they are showing three different quantities:
position, velocity and acceleration. When the acceleration is con-
stant, the velocity will always change at a constant rate (the velocity
vs. time motion graph will be a straight line) and the position func-
tion will always be a quadratic function (the position vs. time graph
will be a parabola).
Our cart had a rather small acceleration of 0.2 m/s2 because it
was rolling down a slope. For objects falling straight down close to
the surface of the Earth, experiments show that the acceleration is
around 9.8 m/s2 . We call this the acceleration due to gravity (on
the surface of the Earth) and we often denote it by the letter ’g’:
g = 9.8 m/s2 ≈ 10 m/s2 (on the surface of the Earth)
Concept #2: Instantaneous acceleration
Understanding motion with constant acceleration is a massive

accomplishment, but we can’t rest on our laurels just yet! Most
examples of motion actually don’t have a constant acceleration,
for example figure 6 shows how the velocity of an object falling
through air changes over time. The velocity is definitely not increas-
ing at a constant rate, so the acceleration can’t be constant – what
do we do in those cases?
Figure 6: When an object falls from

rest through air, its velocity increases
(more realistically) as shown in this
motion graph. Since it’s not a straight
line, we conclude that the acceleration
is not constant.
Luckily we already know what to do! It’s the whole average vs.
instantaneous discussion that we had in lesson 4 for velocity. Now
we just need to do the same for acceleration: When the accelera-
tion isn’t constant, then the average acceleration is not an accurate
description of how the velocity is changing at a given instant in
time2 . What we want is the instantaneous acceleration, i.e. the rate of 2
If the velocity is constant then the
change of velocity at a given moment in time. So we define the in- average and instantaneous velocity is
always the same value and it’s very
stantaneous acceleration as the limit of average accelerations taken easy to deal with (the displacement is
over a smaller and smaller time interval: the actual distance travelled, etc.). It’s
when the velocity isn’t constant, that
∆v dv the average quantity is not the most
ainstantaneous ≡ lim ≡ ≡ v0 (t) ≡ v̇(t)
∆t→0 ∆t dt accurate description to work with and
we had to invent calculus. Likewise
In this limit, the slopes of the average acceleration line segments here, if the acceleration isn’t constant,
come closer and closer to being equal to the slope of the tangent then we need to take the calculus
approach with that quantity.
to the velocity curve, the tangent being the straight line that "just
touches" the curve at that particular point. Instantaneous acceler-
ation is the quantity we are most often talking about when we use
the word “acceleration”, so we often omit the long word “instan-
taneous” and simply say “acceleration” and write a normal “a”
without the long subscript. Here’s our final conclusion: The instan-
taneous acceleration at a particular value of time is equal to the slope of the
tangent line to the velocity vs. time motion graph at that point.
To quickly demonstrate how that works, see figure 7 below.
Three tangents to the velocity curve have been shown at times t1 =
0 s, t2 = 1 s, and t3 = 3 s. By identifying a pair of suitable points
Figure 7: When an object falls from

rest through air, its velocity increases
(more realistically) as shown in this
motion graph. Since it’s not a straight
line, we can conclude that the accelera-
tion is not constant.
on each line, we can calculate the slope of these tangents, thereby

obtaining the instantaneous acceleration at those time values:
∆v (10 − 0) m/s
a1 ≡ lim = slope of the tangent at t1 = = 10 m/s2
∆t→0 ∆t (1 − 0) s
∆v (10 − 3) m/s
a2 ≡ lim = slope of the tangent at t2 = = 3.5 m/s2
∆t→0 ∆t (2 − 0) s
∆v (10 − 9) m/s
a3 ≡ lim = slope of the tangent at t3 = = 0.5 m/s2
∆t→0 ∆t (4 − 2) s
We see that the acceleration is clearly decreasing as the object

moves faster through the air. Eventually the acceleration will reach
zero, the velocity curve will flatten out completely and the object
has reached a constant velocity called terminal velocity in this con-
text (the whole acceleration vs. time motion graph is shown in fig-
ure 8). The reason why the acceleration decreases will be discussed
in our next lesson. Figure 8: The acceleration vs. time mo-
tion graph of the object falling through
Now it’s time to practice all this! Make sure to do all the follow- air. It starts off with a normal free-fall
ing exercises carefully. acceleration of around 10 m/s2 , but
then, as it descends and picks up more
speed, the acceleration decreases and
approaches zero (the reason for this
will be discussed in our next lesson).
When the acceleration is zero is has
reached terminal velocity.
Lesson 5: Problems
1. (a) Assume the motion in this question is one-dimensional.

What is the change in velocity, ∆v, when
i. 6.0 m/s becomes 15 m/s,
ii. 6.0 m/s becomes −15 m/s,
iii. 6.0 m/s becomes 0.0 m/s,
iv. 5.0 m/s south becomes 15 m/s north?
(b) Draw the velocity vectors and the change in velocity vector
for all questions in (a).
(c) All the changes in velocity in (a) happen in 3 seconds. Cal-
culate the average acceleration for each case and describe in
words how the velocity changed.
2. Imagine throwing a tennis ball straight up in the air and let

t = 0 s be the moment you release the ball. Let the zero of the
vertical position axis be the ground and take up as the posi-
tive direction. The motion is described by the motion graphs
shown below. I’ve plotted the velocity (green) and position (blue)
graphs on top of each other to save some space, but remember
they are measured in different units. Use the graphs to answer all
the questions below:
(a) At what height is the object released?

(b) At what time will it hit the ground?
(c) What is the maximum height? At what time does it reach
this height?
(d) What is the instantaneous velocity at t = 0 s?
(e) What is the instantaneous velocity at t = 0.2 s?

(f) What is the velocity at maximum height? What is the acceler-
ation at maximum height?
(g) What is the acceleration throughout the whole motion?
(h) What is the position of the object at t = 0.8 s?
(i) What is the velocity of the object at t = 0.8 s? Compare with
the velocity at t = 0 s and comment on the directions of these
two vector quantities.
(j) With what velocity does the object hit the ground? With what
speed does it hit the ground?
3. (a) Which unit in the list below is a unit of acceleration?

km/h, m/s, kg, miles per hour, feet per second squared
(b) A parachuter steps out of a plane. He falls towards the
ground along a straight line and a simplified velocity vs. time
graph for the entire motion is shown below.
i. What is his change in velocity, ∆v, during the first 15 sec-

onds?
ii. Use your answer above to calculate his average acceleration
during the first 15 seconds.
(c) After the parachute has opened, he moves slowly towards
the ground with a constant speed. With what speed does he
hit the ground?
(d) Indicate on the graph with a point P where the parachuter
opens the parachute.
(e) The previous graph is a simplification and in reality the
graph is more curvy and smooth without any sharp corners:
"This velocity is the asymptotic limiting value of the accelera-
tion process, because the effective forces on the body balance
each other more and more closely as the terminal velocity is

approached. In this example, a speed of 50% of terminal ve-
locity is reached after only about 3 seconds, while it takes 8
seconds to reach 90%, 15 seconds to reach 99% and so on."
(Wikipedia on terminal velocity)
i. Below is shown a smaller section of the graph on the pre-
vious page. Use the information from the above quote to
plot three points and a smooth curve on the new diagram
below that more realistically describes the initial motion in
the time period from t = 0 to 20 s.
ii. Use your drawn curve to estimate the initial instantaneous

acceleration.
4. In this text so far, we have mainly described motion using mo-

tion graphs. It has also been mentioned that all these graphs can
be described by equations. These equations can be written down
more generally as follows (a more thorough discussion including
derivations is given in appendix A for those who are interested):
When the acceleration of a particle, a, is constant (and this in-
cludes the case of zero acceleration), the motion of the particle is
completely described by the two equations
v = at + v0
1 2
x= at + v0 t + x0
2
where t is a given time value, x0 is the initial position, v0 is the
initial velocity, x is the position at time t, and v is the velocity at
time t.
(a) Go to page 39 and look at the three motions graphs. Write

down the two equations that describe the position and veloc-
ity graphs by inserting number values for all the appropriate
parameters. Compare these equations with the mathematical

models x = At2 and v = Bt from lessons 3 and 5 – what do
you notice?
(b) Write down all the equations of motion for the tennis ball
thrown straight up in the air in exercise 2 above.
5. Consider the mathematical model v(t) = 0.2t shown in figure 2.
(a) Calculate the velocity of the cart at times 0 s, 2.5 s, and 109 s.
Do all the answers make sense, are they realistic?
(b) The parameter B in v(t) = Bt has units because v and t have
units. What is the unit of B? (Hint: Rearrange the equation to
isolate B and then think about the units of v and t.)
6. Open up the following link in Chrome Incognito: Play this excel-

lent game called "graphs and tracks". First take the tutorial, then
practice and finally try some of the challenges.
Lesson 5 Quiz
"To tell us that every species of things is endowed with an occult specific quality by which it acts and pro-
duces manifest effects, is to tell us nothing. But to derive two or three general principles of motion from
phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from those
manifest principles, would be a very great step in Philosophy."
— Isaac Newton, in Opticks (1730).
Lesson 6: The cause of acceleration (part A)

In the previous lessons, we have used the concepts position, veloc-
ity, and acceleration to describe/model the motion of a particle1 . In 1
Describing motion mathematically
this lesson we will investigate what the actual cause of motion is. using these concepts is normally called
kinematics, but in my opinion that’s
Finally we get to do some real physics! Newton discovered that a rather old-fashioned term and not
there is an equation – Newton’s 2nd law of motion – that relates particularly useful. Explaining the
underlying cause of motion – the topic
the acceleration of a particle to the forces exerted on it. In brief, if of this lesson – is typically referred to
you know what forces act on an object, you can directly calculate its accel- as dynamics, again not a term I find
eration and then work out the velocity and position at all times. It might particularly useful.
be hard to believe, but Newton’s 2nd law is one of the most im-
portant discoveries in human history! Why? Because it was the first
mathematically accurate cause and effect relationship and it explained
so much of our reality that it set the standard for modern scientific think-
ing. It became possible to predict the future with much more certainty than
before. What does it really mean to know how the world works?
It means knowing - to a high degree of certainty - the underlying
causes to the effects you witness. When ancient civilisations saw a
solar eclipse, they thought the gods were angry. We now know that
it’s just the Moon moving in front of the Sun. There’s an effect (the
Sun gets covered up) and a cause (the motion of the Moon) and we
know it’s true to a high degree of accuracy because we can predict
all future solar eclipses to the nearest fraction of a second! Like-
wise, when people got sick in the old days (an effect), people some-
times thought a curse had been cast on them (the cause). We now Figure 1: A solar eclipse is one of the
know the real cause is germs and that disinfection and good hy- most awesome phenomena in nature
that you can witness. We can predict
giene dramatically reduces the risk of getting ill. We don’t feel “lost when they are going to occur using
in the mysterious Universe” anymore because the scientific method of Newton’s laws of motion, his law of
gravity, and calculus.
inquiry has revealed how the world really works! As discussed in chap-
ter 1, this way of thinking (which many of us take for granted) only
took off due to the success of Newtonian Mechanics. This way of
thinking is the most important lesson to learn for a human being – which 2
All areas of human activity rely on
people being able to efficiently solve
is why I advocate for science being the most important subject in problems and the scientific way of
school.2 thinking (carefully collecting data,
’good evidence’, in order to draw
conclusions that make sense) is what
Concept #1: Newton’s 2nd law gives the best results. By the way,
I think history is the second most
important subject to learn :) You can
So what exactly does Newton’s 2nd law say? It’s a very simple only understand the present (and
statement saying that the acceleration, a, of an object (the effect) make good decisions about the future),
by studying the past.
is directly proportional to the force, F, exerted on the object (the
cause) and inversely proportional to the object’s mass, m:

F
a=
m
We often rearrange this to the following equation: You might be wondering what about
Newton’s 1st and 3rd law? Those are
ma = F or F = ma important laws expressing certain facts
about the behaviour of forces, but for
It’s useful to think of one side of the equaion (the F) as the "cause" now we will only focus our attention
on the most important one by far,
and the other side (containing the a) as the "effect". Notice that the 2nd law. Here are the other two
there are three quantities in the equation: Force, mass and accelera- laws for reference. (1st law): "Every
body perseveres in its state of rest, or of
tion. We have already covered acceleration in great detail (it’s the
uniform motion in a straight line, unless it
most difficult quantity to understand since it requires an under- is compelled to change that state by forces
standing of position, velocity, vectors and calculus), and let’s now impressed upon it.", (3rd law): "If object
A exerts a force on object B, then object B
briefly cover mass and force: will exert an equal and opposite force on
Mass is a measure of how much stuff there is in something and object A.".
it’s a scalar quantity. Until very recently3 we defined 1 kg as simply
being equal to the mass of a particular lump of metal that was 3
The definition of one kilogram
kept safely in a vault in France. This meant that my mass of 75 kg changed in 2019.
– the stuff that makes up me – is 75 times as heavy as the stuff
that makes up the lump of metal in France. A lot of interesting
things can be said about mass, but for now we’ll just leave it at
that. 1 kg (which is the mass of one liter of water) has that same
mass no matter where it is in the Universe (as long as no water is
spilled). According to Newton’s 2nd law, acceleration is inversely
proportional to the mass of an object. This means that the more
mass something has, the harder it is to accelerate given the same
4
Inertia is more related to a concept
force - we often express this by saying the more massive object has called momentum which you will
more inertia.4 learn about later. Momentum, ~p, is
Force is the concept we use to quantify an interaction. There are defined as mass times velocity,
many different types of forces, e.g. the force of gravity, air resis- ~p ≡ m~v
tance (drag), friction between two surfaces that touch, the elastic and it is a very important quantity
force in a rubber band or a stretched spring, the force between in physics when we start dealing
with systems of particles and their
charged objects (the electric force), the strong nuclear force holding interactions.
protons and neutrons together in atomic nuclei, the force between
magnets (the magnetic force), tension in a rope, buoyancy on an ob-
ject submerged in a fluid, etc. We won’t have time to learn about all
these forces in this course, but you should know that forces are due At the fundamental level there are
only four forces in nature: Gravity, the
to real interactions that occur between objects due to the properties of those electromagnetic force (magnetism is
objects. It’s also important to know that forces are vector quantities, really just an electric effect), the weak
nuclear force, and the strong nuclear
they always have a magnitude and a direction. Since acceleration is force.
a vector and mass is a scalar, then according to Newton’s 2nd law
the acceleration always points in the same direction as the force.
We sometimes emphasize the vector nature of Newton’s 2nd law by
drawing vector arrows on the vector quantities:
~F = m~a
Forces are measured in newtons, N, and this unit is defined to be the

amount of force required to accelerate 1 kg by 1 m/s2 . Since F = ma, we
can express the unit N in terms of other units we know as follows:
1 N ≡ 1 kg · 1 m/s2 ⇒ N ≡ kg m s−2
When applying Newton’s 2nd law it’s very important to know

that ~F represents the vector sum of all the forces acting on an object. We
often call this the resultant force, the net force or simply the total
force:
n
~F = ~F1 + ~F2 + · · · ~Fn = ∑ ~Fi = ~Fres = ~Fnet = ~Ftotal
i =1
Vectors are added together by using the tail-to-tip method: Given
a vector, you add a second one by placing its tail at the tip of the
first one. The final sum is then a vector pointing from the tail of
the first vector to the tip of the last vector. Figure 2 shows an object
with four forces acting on it. The net force, the vector sum of the
four forces, is shown in red, and that is the direction the object will
accelerate in under the influence of these four forces. So Newton’s
Figure 2: The net force is the vector

sum of all forces acting on an object
and we add vectors by using the
tail-to-tip method. If you happen to
know the exact coordinates of all these
vectors, then you can easily find the
net force by adding up all the separate
components.
2nd law is really a statement saying that the resultant/net/total

force is equal to the mass times the acceleration and you often see
this expressed as
Fres = ma or ∑ F = ma
5
This can more easily be expressed as
Concept #2: The force of gravity a simple formula:
Mm
The first force that we understood well was the force of gravity and Fgrav = G
r2
this force is due to objects having mass: Every piece of mass attracts
every other piece of mass in the universe with a force that is directly pro- In lesson 5 we saw that objects falling
portional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the close to the surface of the Earth (and
neglecting air resistance) have an
square of the distance between their centers.5 When we stand on the
acceleration of 9.8 m/s2 ≈ 10 m/s2 . It’s
surface of the Earth, we can measure that the Earth pulls in a mass not a coincidence that this value is the
of 1 kg with a force of around 9.8 N (roughly 10 N). We express same as the gravitational field strength
– they are in fact identical quantities as
that by saying the gravitational field strength on the Earth is 9.8 we can see by inserting the definition
newtons per kilogram and we write of one newton into the gravitational
field strength:
g = 9.8 N/kg ≈ 10 N/kg
kg m s−2
g = 9.8 N/kg = 9.8
A mass of 2 kg on the surface of the Earth will experience twice that kg
amount of force, etc. so we can always calculate the force of gravity = 9.8 m/s2
on a mass m, by using the formula So the acceleration due to gravity and
the gravitational field strength are
W = mg really identical concepts that can be
expressed in two different units. This
The force of gravity is also called weight, hence the use of the letter is also why we use the same symbol
W in the formula. ’g’ in both cases.
Concept #3: Free-body diagrams
Whenever you apply Newton’s 2nd law, it’s a good idea to draw a
so-called free-body diagram (FBD) like the one shown on the left
in figure 2. This is also called a force diagram and it’s just a simple
drawing showing all the forces acting on an object. We usually
6
When dealing with rotating objects
draw the forces roughly at the places they’re applied, although that the point of action of a force becomes
is not too important for simple cases6 . What is important though, is much more relevant, but we won’t
to only draw forces acting on the object. cover that in this course.
As a first application of Newton’s 2nd law, let’s look at an object

being pushed along a table. It’s a demonstration you can probably
do right now – do it! The first question to ask is always: Which
forces are acting on the object? There is of course a vertical force
of gravity on it, but that is being balanced out by a vertical force
from the table pushing back on the object. This vertical push from
the table is perpendicular to the table and we often called that the
normal force (because "normal" means perpendicular in math).
Since those two vertical forces balance out, they don’t affect the
horizontal acceleration, so we will neglect them for now and only
focus on the horizontal forces. In the horizontal direction, there is 7
The table exerts a force on the object,
but the object also exerts a force on the
of course your push force, ~Fpush , but we also have a friction force, table. However, we are only interested
~Ffriction due to the table rubbing against the object.7 Newton’s 2nd in the motion of the object, so we don’t
law (in the horizontal direction) for this situation can be written as care about the force that the object
exerts on the table.
m~a = ~Fpush + ~Ffriction (1)
Since this motion is one-dimensional, we can imagine a reference

frame consisting of a single coordinate axis pointing, say, in the
direction of your push, to the right. Hence the push force will be
positive and the friction force will be negative. Now if your push is
larger than the friction force, what happens?
Figure 3: A FBD for an object being

pushed across a table. The positive
direction is taken to the right.
Say your push is 5 N and the friction force is −1 N, see figure 3.

Assume also that the mass of the object is 2 kg. Equation (1) then
becomes
(2 kg) · a = (5 N) + (−1 N) = 4 N
which allows us to calculate the acceleration,
4N
a= = 2 m/s2 .
2 kg
In this case the object will increase its velocity at a constant rate. It
is accelerating with a constant acceleration and it will move to the
right (in the positive direction) at an ever increasing speed. The net
force on the object is Fnet = 4 N and it can be visualised by drawing
the vector sum as seen in figure 4.
Figure 4: Here is shown the net force

which is the vector sum of the push
force and the friction force. The net
force is pointing to the right, in the
same direction as the acceleration.
What happens if your push force is equal (in magnitude) to the

friction force? (We are assuming here, that the object is already in
motion). If your push is 1 N and the friction force is −1 N (equal in
magnitude, but pointing in opposite directions), then equation (1)
reduces to
(2 kg) · a = (1 N) + (−1 N) = 0 N
and the acceleration is zero – the object moves along the table with a
constant velocity. The vector sum just gives zero (try to draw the
vector sum diagram). It’s very important to understand that an
object can be moving even though the acceleration is zero - it will
just not change its velocity. 8 8
This particular point was very hard
What happens when you remove your push force? Then equa- for the ancient Greeks to understand
(and it still is for many learners of
tion (1) becomes physics today): The Aristotelian
thinkers thought that a moving object
(2 kg) · a = (0 N) + (−1 N) = −1 N (even one moving at a constant speed
along a straight line) required a
continuously applied force (which was
which gives an acceleration a = −0.5 m/s2 (where is the net force
often provided by some mysterious
now pointing?). The velocity will now decrease at a constant rate, "mover", hence the door was wide
the object will decelerate and at some point come to rest. Say it open to all sorts of "spirits", which
is also why the church liked the
was moving with a velocity of 3.0 m/s before you removed your Aristotelian world model). Newton’s
push force, how long would it take for it to come to rest? 6 seconds! 1st law of motion, essentially Galileo’s
law of inertia, is all about removing
Because if it’s decreasing by 0.5 m/s every second, then it takes
the "mysterious mover".
a velocity of 3.0 m/s that amount of time to reach 0.0 m/s. We
understand motion!
Figure 5: Forces on an arrow. I have

omitted the force of gravity that is
also acting on the arrow because we
are assuming the arrow has a very
small mass, so its weight is negligible
compared to the other forces shown.
When the arrow is released and left to
fly through the air, then gravity and air
resistance are the significant forces to
take into account
Here’s another example, this time two-dimensional: Say an

archer wants to shoot an arrow, so he pulls it back as shown in
figure 5. The FBD of the arrow is also shown. The archer pulls back
the arrow, but the two string tensions combine to pull the arrow in
the forward direction (string tension always acts in the direction
along the string). If the arrow is at rest these three forces "balance
out", which means their vector sum is zero. So if the three arrows
are added using the tail-to-tip method, they form a closed triangle:
The net force is zero. When the archer lets go, his force disappears,
the string tensions combine to create a net force pointing to the
right (now "unbalanced" by the missing pull) and they accelerate
the arrow forward according to Newton’s 2nd law of motion. When
the arrow is released and left to fly through the air, then the only
forces acting on the arrow are gravity and air resistance. Those
forces then dictate how the motion proceeds according to New-
ton’s 2nd law. The trajectory of an arrow is an example of projectile
motion which is something you will learn more about later.
Lesson 6: Problems
1. (a) Use the weight formula, W = mg, to determine how much

Earth is pulling in the following masses that are on the surface
of the Earth. Use g = 10 N/kg.
i. 0.1 kg (a small book),
ii. 8 kg (a big bag of rice),
iii. 1000 kg (a car),
iv. 12 mg (a fly),
v. 20 g (a sheet of paper)
(b) On the surface of the Moon, the gravitational field strength
is only around 1/6 of what it is on Earth’s surface. What is
the value of g on the Moon? How much would the Moon
be pulling in the masses from (a) if they were on the surface
of the Moon? How would this affect the acceleration if you
dropped them? Watch a hammer and a feather being dropped
on the moon!
(c) What is your weight on Earth? Is it the same on the Moon?
How does your mass compare these two places? If you stand
on a bathroom scale on the Moon will it show your actual
mass?
2. A heavy physics book (m = 2 kg) is at rest on a chair. Use g = 10

N/kg and answer the following questions:
(a) What is its weight?

(b) According to F = ma, forces cause accelerations. Why is the
block not accelerating downwards? Draw a FBD of the book
which includes all the forces acting on it.
(c) What is the net force on the book? What is therefore the net
acceleration according to Newton’s 2nd law? If the chair is
very quickly removed, which force on the book disappears?
Which force remains? What is now the net force on the book?
(d) Calculate the acceleration of the book right after the chair is
removed. In which direction does it accelerate and why?
3. Imagine pushing a small block of mass 0.2 kg across the floor.
(a) If it’s moving with a constant velocity and your push is 10 N,

what is the magnitude of the friction force?
(b) What happens when you remove your push force?
(c) If the block is moving with 5 m/s when you let go, how long
will it take to come to rest? (Assume the friction force has a
constant magnitude.)
4. A car is driving on a road with constant velocity, see the picture

below.
There is of course a force of gravity pulling the car towards the

center of the Earth, but the road pushes upwards on the car to
balance that force out so the car only moves horizontally (this
is often called the normal force and it is always perpendicular
to the surface). Technically there are normal forces acting on
each wheel and their combined effect balances out the weight.
There must also be a force pushing the car forward and this force
must come from the road (if it was on a perfect slippery surface
it wouldn’t be able to move). There is drag on the car due to the
air molecules (and a little bit of rolling friction due to the road,
but let’s disregard that here). Add up all the vectors using the
tail-to-tip method. What is the net force in this case?
5. Consider again the archer in figure 5. Let the two tension forces
have a magnitude of 50 N and each one makes an angle of 40
degrees to the horizontal (one pointing above the horizontal, one
below). Assume the archer has just let go of the arrow and the
arrow is launched perfectly horizontal.
(a) What is the magnitude and direction of the net force on the
arrow at the moment of release?
(b) If the arrow has a mass of 350 g, what is its acceleration as it

is released? Does this acceleration remain constant throughout
the flight of the arrow?
(c) The arrow hits a target far away. Sketch a realistic trajectory
for the arrow.
(d) Why is the trajectory in (c) not straight?
6. A beach ball is being held totally submerged underwater. When

objects displace water, they experience a force of buoyancy (=
upthrust) that seeks to push them out of the water (Archimedes
discovered that the buoyancy equals "the weight of the displaced
water", something we now call Archimedes’ Law.)
(a) Draw a free-body diagram of the beach ball.

(b) The person holding it suddenly lets go. Now draw another
free-body diagram of the beach ball. In which direction is
the net force pointing? If the weight is 5 N and the force of
buoyancy is 20 N, what is the net force on the beach ball the
instant it is released?
(c) Calculate the instantaneous acceleration of the beach ball the
moment it is released.
(d) Will the acceleration stay constant as it moves through the
water?
Lesson 6 Quiz
Lesson 7: The cause of acceleration (part B)

We are now finally in a position where we can completely explain
our tennis ball drops from lesson 1! We will consider four cases,
in order to clearly build up our understanding of what is going
on. The first two cases are relatively straightforward, but the last
two have a lot of moving parts. The final case will be the actual
explanation of our tennis balls drops.
Case #1: Two objects with different masses and different sizes falling
through empty space.
Imagine two objects of different mass, M > m, released from rest.
After release there is only one force acting on them, the force of
gravity (weight). Since they have different masses, the weights will
be different, and the FBDs are shown in figure 1. Writing down
Figure 1: Two objects with different

masses and different sizes falling
through empty space. Despite the
weights being different (the larger
mass experiences a larger force of
gravity), their accelerations will be
exactly the same because the heavier
mass is harder to accelerate. The two
opposite effects exactly cancel out in
Newton’s 2nd law.
Newton’s 2nd law for each mass, we get the following equations:
Ma = Fgravity and ma = Fgravity

a =
M
M
g and ma =
mg
a=g and a=g
These equations show that both masses fall with exactly the same
acceleration g = 9.8 m/s2 despite one being heavier than the other!
Even though the force on the heavy mass is larger, it is also harder
to accelerate (it has more mass) and these two effects cancel each
other out exactly so they increase their velocity at the same rate.1 1
This fact is often memorised in the
This is demonstrated in the following two videos: form "Different masses always fall
with the same acceleration at the
surface of the Earth", but you should
• A hammer and a feather dropped on the moon. know that it is only correct if there is
no air resistance.
• A bowling ball and some feathers dropped in a large vacuum
chamber.
Case #2: A single object with mass m falling through air.

Take an object with mass m falling through some air. Consider it at
three different times: 1) The moment it is released, 2) a short while
after release, and 3) when it has reached terminal velocity. The
moment it is released, it has an instantaneous velocity of zero, but
there is a force of gravity acting on it which creates an acceleration
that will make it move. A short while after release, the object has
Figure 2: A single object falling

through air. It is shown at three
different moments as explained in the
text.
2
Air resistance is proportional to
speed, something you have perhaps
noticed when biking or sticking your
hand out the window of a moving car
increased its velocity a bit and now it experiences a small amount (be careful if you decide to try this
of air resistance (drag) pointing opposite to its motion. After a out!)
while, due to the velocity increasing, the drag becomes just as big
as the force of gravity and they cancel each other out.2 Thus the
net force becomes zero, the object stops accelerating, and it reaches
terminal velocity. The FBDs for these three different moments are
shown in figure 2, and applying Newton’s 2nd law to these situa-
tions gives us:
ma = Fgravity ma = Fgravity − Fdrag ma = Fgravity − Fdrag

ma =
mg ma = mg − Fdrag ma = 0
Fdrag
a=g a = g− m <g a=0
As you can see, the acceleration decreases the faster it moves

through the air due to the drag increasing in magnitude. The ac-
celeration becomes zero when the drag balances out the weight and
then the object falls with a constant velocity. In figure 3 you can
see all three motion graphs for an object falling through air. This is
demonstrated in the following two videos:
• A no parachute free-fall from a height of almost 8 km. Figure 3: The position (blue), velocity
(green), and acceleration (red) vs. time
• Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic freefall motion graphs for an object falling
through air.
Step #3: Two objects with the same mass, but different sizes falling
through air.
Take two identical sheets of paper. Crumple one into a ball and
then release both objects at the same time. The moment they are
released, they both have an instantaneous velocity of zero, but
gravity will instantly start accelerating them at the same rate (at
that moment the net force on each of them is equal to the weight
Figure 4: Two sheets of paper, one

crumpled up to a ball, released at the
same time. At the moment of release,
they have the same acceleration, and
the instantaneous velocities, together
with the drag forces, are both zero.
and the drag is zero because they are not moving through the air
yet, see figure 4).
A short while after the release, as both objects gain a small
amount of speed, they experience very different drag forces. The
object with the much larger surface area (the sheet) will experience
much more air resistance because this depends on the surface area
that is impacted by the air. Hence the net force on the sheet of pa-
per will be much smaller and it will accelerate at a much smaller
rate than the crumpled up paper ball. The FBDs are shown in fig-
ure ?? and the equations of motion are below.
Figure 5: Two pieces of paper, one

same time. After a short while, they
have built up some speed, but they
experience very different amounts of
drag due to the difference in surface
area. The net force on the crumpled
up paper ball is much larger, so it will
continue to accelerate at a higher rate
and build up more speed.
ma1 = mg − Fdrag,small ma2 = mg − Fdrag,large

Fdrag,small Fdrag,large
a1 = g − m a2 = g − m
Comparing the two accelerations, a1 for the paper ball and a2 for
the sheet of paper, we can see that a1 is larger than a2 because we
are subtracting a smaller fraction from g:
Fdrag,small Fdrag,large
< ⇒ a1 > a2
m m
Hence the paper ball will increase its speed at a much faster rate
than the paper sheet. When they reach their terminal velocities,
both objects experience a net force of zero and they stop accelerat-
ing (but they continue to fall, of course). The FBDs are shown in
figure 7. The crumpled up paper ball will end up having a larger
terminal velocity because it accelerated at a higher rate for a longer Figure 6: The velocity vs. time curves
of the crumpled up paper ball and
amount of time, see figure 6. Note how this effect is only due to paper sheet of same mass. The drag
the difference in air resistance because the two objects have equal on the sheet of paper has been set to
masses. Notice also how the drag forces have the same magnitude be 5 times as much as the crumpled
up paper ball. Which curve belongs to
in the end despite one falling faster than the other. which object?
Figure 7: Two pieces of paper, one

same time. They reach very differ-
ent terminal velocities, because the
crumpled up paper ball accelerated
at a higher rate for a longer period of
time. Despite that, they both end up
with the same amount of drag on them
as they reach their different terminal
velocities.
Step #4: Two tennis balls with different masses, but the same size
falling through air.
At last we come to the tennis balls drops! The moment they are
released, they both have an instantaneous velocity of zero, but
gravity will instantly start accelerating them at the same rate (at
this moment the net force on each of them is equal to their weight
and the drag force is zero because they are not moving through the
air yet, see figure 8).
Figure 8: Two tennis balls of same

size but different mass (one has been
filled with sand) released at the same
time. At the moment of release, they
have the same acceleration, and the
instantaneous velocities, together with
the drag forces, are both zero.
A short while after the release, both objects gain a small amount
of speed, see figure 9. They experience the same amount of drag
force because they have the same surface area and speed. But since
the weight is larger for the heavy ball, it has a slightly larger net
force, which results in a slightly larger acceleration. This can be
seen by writing down Newton’s 2nd law:
Figure 9: After a short while, they

have built up some speed, and they
experience the same amount of drag
due to the surface area and speed
being the same. But since the weight
on the heavy ball is larger, the net
force on the heavy ball is larger despite
the drag being equal, so the heavy ball
has a slightly larger acceleration than
the light ball and will over time pull
away from the lighter ball. This effect
however, is only noticeable if they are
dropped over a long distance!
ma1 = mg − Fdrag Ma2 = Mg − Fdrag

Fdrag Fdrag
a1 = g − m a2 = g − M
Comparing the two accelerations, a1 for the light ball and a2 for the
heavy ball, we can see that a1 is smaller than a2 ,
a1 < a2
because m < M implies that
Fdrag Fdrag
>
m M
Due to the larger acceleration the heavy tennis ball now increases
its velocity at a faster rate and it will pull away from the lighter
ball. A clever student might argue here that as the heavy ball in-
creases its speed, wouldn’t the drag also increase and lower the
acceleration? How does one take that into account? Good question!
The only way to answer that correctly is to learn how to use inte-
gral calculus properly and solve what we call a differential equation.
By doing so, it is possible to keep track of how all the continuously
changing quantities affect each other at every moment in time (I
had to do that in order to draw the motion graphs shown here).
So this is where we reach the end of the road for our non-calculus
explanations. Eventually, given enough time, the balls will reach
terminal velocity when the drag balances out the weight. The final
drag on the heavy ball will be greater than the final drag on the
light ball, and the heavy ball will reach a slightly larger terminal
velocity (see figures 10 and 11).
Figure 10: This diagram shows the
velocity vs. time motion graphs for
the light and heavy tennis balls. The
masses are set to 1 kg and 1.5 kg
respectively and they are both released
from rest.
Figure 11: When the two tennis balls

both reach terminal velocity (which
they do at different times), the drag is
larger on the heavier ball.
Finally we were able to explain the tennis ball drops! Here are
videos of the drop over a long distance in case you forgot what it
looks like: One light, one heavy tennis ball: Whole drop, slowmo of
impact. Look over the explanation you gave in lesson 1 and see if
you made any mistakes or omissions. Would you be able to give a
better answer now?
Lesson 7: Problems
1. A skydiver steps out of a plane. Explain the details of the sky-

diver’s motion from the moment she jumps to the moment she
reaches terminal velocity.
Lesson 7 Quiz
"Skeptics often think that believers and pseudo-scientists lack evidence but that’s never true. Everybody
thinks they have evidence for what they believe. The question is: What qualifies as good evidence? How
do you define good evidence? That’s where the problem is. It’s not a lack of evidence, it’s a lack of good
evidence and a misunderstanding of the difference."
– Jamy Ian Swiss, The Conjuror’s Conundrum (2021)
Lesson 8: An experimental verification of New-

ton’s 2nd law
Newton’s 2nd law of motion is a claim about how the world works.
In lessons 6 and 7 we saw how it can be used to explain the motion
of falling objects, but how certain are we that it is always "true"?
Does it really explain all motion in the Universe as I so boldly
stated in the beginning of this course? So far, I have only shown
you a couple of demonstrations (and we didn’t spend too much
time measuring things carefully) so how can I possibly go from a 1
You should also be critical of what-
ever I am saying! Healthy scepticism
few tennis ball drops to explaining the whole Universe? Maybe it is always highly recommended. Nev-
only works on Mondays? Maybe it doesn’t work when you go to ertheless, if a claim has passed nu-
Mars? Maybe it only applies to tennis balls? Or maybe I’m just a merous scientific tests in a multitude
of ways, then it is undeniably worth
crook trying to brainwash you into buying whatever I’m selling. believing in and it would seem silly to
You should always think critically about what people confidently profess stubbornly refuse it. One should keep
an open mind and be on the lookout
to you1 . Claims about reality must be tested experimentally. Ideally, you for phenomena that don’t fit a given
should only believe in something if it accurately predicts the outcome of a pattern, but our minds shouldn’t be so
fair, precise experiment. The logic of science is the experiment and there is open that our brains fall out.
no better way to construct your overall worldview.2 2

Here’s a fun little story about a
One important aspect of the scientific method of inquiry is the magician offering to scientifically
verify supernatural claims.
peer review process, which is explained well here. In a nutshell,
peer review is when scientists communicate their results to a wider
scientific community in order to share their findings and get feed-
back on their work. This communication often takes the form of
articles that are polished versions of what we in school call "lab
reports". As stated in the link above:
"Peer-reviewed articles provide a trusted form of scientific communi-
cation. Even if you are unfamiliar with the topic or the scientists who
authored a particular study, you can trust peer-reviewed work to
meet certain standards of scientific quality. Since scientific knowledge
is cumulative and builds on itself, this trust is particularly important.
No scientist would want to base their own work on someone else’s
unreliable study! Peer-reviewed work isn’t necessarily correct or con-
clusive, but it does meet the standards of science. And that means
that once a piece of scientific research passes through peer review
and is published, science must deal with it somehow – perhaps by
Figure 1: Scientific articles that go
incorporating it into the established body of scientific knowledge, through the peer-review process are
building on it further, figuring out why it is wrong, or trying to published in scientific journals. Here is
replicate its results" the front page of the journal "Science"
which is published by the American
We will spend this lesson going over how to write such a "lab Association of the Advancement of
Science (AAAS).
report" and as an example I’ve chosen to share my experimental
confirmation of Newton’s 2nd law. First read the following lab

report that I wrote:
A verification of Newton’s 2nd law of motion: Given a cart with

constant mass, how does the applied force affect its acceleration?
After reading the lab report carefully, we’ll have a classroom

discussion. And then you can work on the questions below.
Lesson 8: Problems
1. If you don’t know how to use a spreadsheet properly, then it’s

probably a good idea to watch this screencast (5 min).
2. Here is a screencast (12 min) on how to transfer your data from

a spreadsheet into desmos, how to draw error bars, and how to
fit a mathematical model to your data.
Figure 2: Here is an example of a
3. In my lab report (and in the above desmos screencast), I men- physics article published in a journal
tion three different models: A directly proportional model, a called the Proceedings of The Royal
Society A.
quadratic model and a rational function model. Figure 1 below
shows a screenshot of the information desmos gave me about
the three models. The R2 value is a statistical parameter that
says something about how close the data points lie to a particu-
lar mathematical curve. The closer R2 is to 1, the closer the data
points are to the curve. This parameter, however, does not take
into account the uncertainties of your experiment (the error bars
are essentially “invisible to R2 ”).
Figure 3: Three different models used

to describe the data collected in my lab
report. One makes much more sense
than the others and the R2 value alone
does not reveal that.
(a) Do all models have R2 values close to 1?

(b) The straight line model has a R2 value rather close to 1, so
why did I disregard that model in my lab report?
(c) Why is the model with the greatest R2 value here not the
best model?
(d) Why do teachers tell students that they should not only rely
on the R2 value to justify their choice of model?
4. Above and beyond: In my lab report example, I didn’t take friction

into account in the model. Try to improve the model by doing
that and see if you get an even better verification of Newton’s
2nd law. (Spoiler alert: You will! And it gives an R2 value which is
indeed higher than all the three models in question 3.)
Lesson 8 Quiz
Figure 4: Here’s another scientific jour-

nal. This one is called "The American
Journal of Physics". It’s an under-
graduate level physics journal that
mainly contains interesting pedagog-
ical articles rather than cutting-edge
research.
Lesson 9: Performing your own scientific inves-

tigation
Figure 1: The Flammarion engraving

is a wood engraving by an unknown
artist, so named because its first docu-
mented appearance is in Camille Flam-
marions’s 1888 book L’atmosphere:
meteorolgie populaire ("The Atmo-
sphere: Popular Meteorology"). It has
been used as a metaphorical illustra-
tion of the scientific quest for knowl-
edge. The print depicts a man, clothed
in a long robe and carrying a staff,
who is at the edge of the Earth, where
it meets the sky. He kneels down and
passes his head, shoulders, and right
arm through the star-studded sky,
discovering a marvellous realm of
circling clouds, fires and suns beyond
the heavens. (Source: Wikipedia.)
In the remaining five lessons of this course, you will perform

your own experiment and write a lab report which will be your
criterion B assessment for this semester. Here you will find all the
resources that you need in order to accomplish that.
The formalities
• The time allocated to this adds up to
Class time + homework time = 5 × 70 min + 5 × 30 min

= 500 min
≈ 8 hours
You should aim to collect all your data in 1-2 lessons, write the
lab report in 1-2 lessons, and proof-read your work and polish
it off in 1 lesson (don’t underestimate that last step!). And don’t
forget to also spend homework time on it!
• You must pair up with one or two other students in class and
carry out the experiment together. But when it comes to submit-
ting the lab report you have two choices:
– You can write the lab report together and submit one lab re-
port as a group. In this case you will all receive the same
grade.
– You write your own lab report. In this case you will receive an
individual grade.
I highly recommend that you go with the first choice (writing it

together) because it’s important to learn how to collaborate (and
you actually learn more in the process).
• When you have found your lab partner(s) and decided on a

research question, then fill out this spreadsheet with the details.
Note that you must also include links to your spreadsheet and
desmos graph (when you eventually have them ready).
• When you are done with the lab report, then please export it to
.pdf and submit this .pdf file to Schoology as your assessment.
Resources
• Here is a lab report guide that you should try to follow as much
as possible.
• Here is a lab report example written by me. Don’t think your lab
report has to look exactly the same – this is just an example.
• Here are two screencasts, one on how to use spreadsheets (5

min), one on how to use desmos (12 min).
• Here is a criterion B marking checklist that can help you remem-

ber all the important parts.
Possible research questions

Here is the list of research questions to choose from. I’ve tried to
list them in order of difficulty, although that is rather subjective.
1. How does the mass of a cart affect its acceleration?
2. How does the release height of a water drop affect the diameter
of the impact circle?
3. When a projectile is launched, how does the launch angle affect

the horizontal distance travelled?
4. How does the mass affect the angle at which an object starts
sliding down a ramp?
5. How does the time it takes a ball to roll down a slope depend on
the angle of the slope?
6. How does the length of a swinging pendulum affect its period?
7. How does the mass of water in a water bottle affect its toppling
angle?
Afterword
Here are a few significant ideas to take away from this short course:
• Principia is one of the most influential books ever written:

Modern science as we know it originated in Europe in the 1600s.
Isaac Newton’s successful theory of motion, and the experi-
mental verifications of it, was a significant contribution to this
development. In his work Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia
Mathematica from 1687 (written in Latin) Isaac Newton put
forward one of the first mathematically accurate cause-effect rela-
tionships, his 2nd law of motion, F = ma. Combining this simple
looking equation with his law of gravity, he explained all motion
on Earth and in the heavens. This created a revolution in our
understanding of how the world works.
• The scientific method of inquiry is the most reliable and effec-

tive way of knowing. There is only one reality and the project
of modern science is to describe it as accurately as possible to
the precision of the equipment we have at hand. Here is a very
brief summary of how it works: We perform fair and precise ex-
periments and we openly share the results of these with a wider Figure 1: The title page of Principia,
scientific community. All attempts to explain the outcomes of first edition (1687).
these experiments are relentlessly criticised by the entire scien-
tific community until eventually a model that agrees with all the
best available data is found. If this best model continues to be
accurate across a wide range of applications, then we start call-
ing it a “theory” and we believe it to be true - always knowing,
however, that presented with new data we might one day have
to modify it slightly to make it even more accurate. By repeating
this process again and again, we inch our way closer to all the
useful truths about how the world works. Climate change – one
of the biggest challenges facing humans today – is something we can
only overcome by using the scientific method to better understand the
cause-effect relationships affecting our precious habitat planet Earth.1 1
And we try to understand climate
change by building climate models.
• Mathematics is a language that we use to describe the patterns Please read more about those here.
we observe in Nature. As Nature’s patterns get more compli-
cated, we need to use more sophisticated mathematics in order
to describe the world more accurately. Isaac Newton was one
of the inventors of the field of mathematics called calculus and
this new language was crucial to understanding motion. It is
impossible to understand more advanced physics (e.g. quantum
mechanics), without learning more advanced mathematics. The
way the world really works is impossible to describe accurately
using only words (or it would at least take a very long time to
explain even the simplest things).
• Everyday phenomena are surprisingly complex and we can

only understand them properly by applying scientific laws
correctly. Most people are completely confused when trying to
describe something as simple as dropping a ball through air. If
we can’t understand something as simple as that, how can we
ever hope to solve much more complicated problems such as
finding a cure for cancer or learning how to power our world
with only sustainable energy sources? Luckily, thousands of
scientists have worked very hard over the past centuries and we
have come very far in our understanding of the world. Modern
civilisation with all its conveniences is a direct result of modern
science, and we can only solve the problems we face by learning
more science and increasing our understanding of the complex
world. Get involved! Study science :)
"Philosophy is written in this grand book – I mean the universe – which stands continually open to our gaze,
but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is
written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures,
without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering
about in a dark labyrinth."
– Galileo Galilei, The Assayer (1623), As translated in The Philosophy of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries (1966) by Richard Henry Popkin, p. 65
Appendix: The "suvat" equations

In lessons 2 to 5, I introduced position, velocity, and acceleration
and our focus was on motion graphs and the conceptual under-
standing gained from studying them. A picture is often worth a
thousand words, and motion graphs are “pictures of motion” that
are similarly very useful. Motion graphs, however, are only one
side of the story, and the underlying equations are equally impor-
tant. In many cases, it’s actually more convenient taking an alge-
braic approach to a motion problem, and in this lesson I’m going
to be talking about that. In particular, I’m going to derive what we
call the “suvat" equations: A simple set of equations that completely
describe motion with constant acceleration.
This lesson is going to be rather technical as I will be going over
a lot of subtle (mathematical) details. These details are in fact the
beginnings of integral calculus, so the seed to understanding much
more advanced physics is being planted here.
Concept #1: Area in a velocity vs. time motion diagram
Let’s get started by looking at a very simple case of a particle mov-

ing with zero acceleration. This is a special case of constant accel-
eration. If the acceleration is zero, then we know the velocity is
constant. This, of course, follows from the definition of acceleration,
e.g.1 1
You get the same if you use the
instantaneous velocity, since
∆v ∆v dv
a=0 ⇒ =0 ⇒ ∆v = 0 ⇒ v = constant 0 = a = lim =
∆t ∆t→0 ∆t dt
= slope of velocity vs. time graph
When the velocity is constant, it’s very easy to find the displace-
⇒ v(t) = constant
ment of the particle during any time interval, since from the defini-
tion of velocity,2
∆x 2
Again, since v is constant I don’t need
v≡ ⇒ ∆x = v∆t
∆t to worry about using the instanta-
neous velocity here. When things are
For example, if the velocity of a particle is 15 m/s then during a straight (linear) and simple, differential
time interval of ∆t = 2 s (e.g. from 0 s to 2 s) the particle will have calculus is rarely needed.
moved
∆x = 15 m/s · 2 s = 30 m
From 2 s to 5 s, during a time interval of ∆t = 3 s, it will futher have

displaced itself
∆x = 15 m/s · 3 s = 45 m
Therefore, the overall displacement during the first five seconds is
75 m. It’s important to know how to visualise these displacements
on a velocity vs. time motion diargam as the area under the velocity
vs. time graph, see figure 1. The total area adds up to 75 m which is
the total displacement of the particle.
Figure 1: When velocity is constant,

it’s easy to calculate the displacement,
simply multiply the constant velocity
by the time interval. Notice this is the
same as the rectangular area below the
constant velocity vs. time graph.
Recall that position is not exactly the same as displacement,

e.g. if the particle was initially (at t = 0 s) 100 m away from the
origin of whatever reference frame is being used, then the particle’s
position after five seconds would be 175 m. It displaced itself 75 m
from the position 100 m to the position 175 m. We can easily find
an equation for the position of the particle at all times: Assume
the initial position of the particle (at t = 0 s) is x0 and let x be the
position at another time t. It then follows from the definition of
velocity that
∆x x − x0
v≡ = ⇒ vt = x − x0 ⇒ x = vt + x0
∆t t−0
Hence, the position vs. time graph is a straight line with slope v
(the constant velocity) and the intercept on the position axis is x0 ,
the initial position (see figure 2). For our particle example above,
this position function would be (having omitted the units for clar-
ity)
x(t) = 15t + 100
Now what would happen if the velocity is constant 15 m/s for
the first two seconds, and then suddenly constant 20 m/s for the
next three seconds? The velocity vs. time graph for this case is Figure 2: When the velocity is constant
(because acceleration is zero), the po-
shown in figure 3. The displacement over the first two seconds sition vs. time graph is just a straight
would still be 30 m, but the displacement during the next three sec- line. The equation for this position
onds would now be 60 m (not 45 m as before) because it’s moving function is x(t) = vt + x0 .
faster. The area under the velocity vs. time graph during this time
interval is now bigger, see figure 4.
Figure 3: A particle moving at a

constant velocity of 15 m/s for the first
two seconds and at a constant velocity
of 20 m/s for the next three seconds.
Don’t worry about the unrealistic
sudden change at t = 2 s, nothing can
instantly change its velocity like that.
This abstract example is just a stepping
stone leading us to the more realistic
continuously changing case in figure 7
below.
Figure 4: As the velocity increases, the

area under the graph also increases.
The corresponding position vs. time graph is shown in figure 5.

It consists of two straight line sections, one for the first two seconds
and another for the last three seconds. Writing down the position
function for this graph is a bit tricky, but the first section is easy
enough. The initial position, when t = 0 s, is 100 m, so we get x =
15t + 100 (for the first two seconds). But for the next three seconds
we need to be careful. It’s easy to see that the slope of the line
increases to 20 m/s (the larger velocity), but we can’t use the initial
position of 100 m anymore, because if the particle had been moving
with 20 m/s the whole time, then it wouldn’t have started at 100 m
when t = 0 s, instead it would have been at 130 − 20 m/s · 2 s =
90 m (extrapolate the line backwards as shown in figure 5). So the
equation of the straight line for the last three seconds is x = 20t + 90.
All in all, one could describe the position vs. time function as the
following piecewise function which is graphed in figure 5: Figure 5: The position vs. time graph
 of the particle that first moves at a
15t + 100 0 < t < 2 constant velocity of 15 m/s for two
x(t) = seconds and then at a constant velocity
20t + 90 2<t<5 of 20 m/s for three seconds.
Concept #2: The 1st suvat equation, v = at + v0
So far so good. Now let’s consider a particle that has a velocity

vs. time graph as shown in figure 6. Let’s call that a step graph.
It has a constant velocity for one second, but after each second it
increases the constant velocity by 5 m/s . In order to get the total
Figure 6: A velocity vs. time step-

graph. If you calculate the total area
under the graph you should get 125 m.
displacement after five seconds, we need to add the five different

rectangular areas below each step. This can be expressed as follows
∆x = total displacement = ∆x1 + ∆x2 + · · · + ∆x5

= v1 ∆t1 + v2 ∆t2 + · · · + v5 ∆t5
5
= ∑ vi ∆ti
i=1
where the notation hopefully makes sense. You can check using
figure 6 that this sum in our example is 125 m. Let’s go even further
now: What if the velocity started at 15 m/s and then continuously
increased at a constant rate of 5 m/s2 ? In other words, what if the mo-
tion had a constant acceleration of 5 m/s2 and the velocity vs. time
graph was a smooth, continuous straight line like in figure 7 (not a
step graph like the one in figure 6)? How do we calculate the dis-
placement in this case? Since the velocity is changing continuously
at a constant rate, it never has a constant value, so how do we add
up all the displacement areas?
Before we tackle this problem of finding the area, let’s first
quickly see how we can work out the equation of the smooth ve-
locity function. If the acceleration has a constant (non-zero) value,
Figure 7: When the velocity is contin-
then it’s easy to find the change in velocity, because from the defini- uously changing (such as the straight
tion of acceleration we get line graph shown here) it is never
constant, so how can we calculate rect-
∆v angular areas under the graph? Read
a≡ ⇒ ∆v = a∆t on!
∆t
Assuming the initial velocity of the particle (when t = 0), is v0 and
letting v be the position at another time t, it then follows from the
definition of acceleration that

∆v v − v0
a≡ = ⇒ at = v − v0 ⇒ v = at + v0
∆t t−0
Hence, the velocity vs. time graph is a straight line with slope a
(the constant acceleration) and the intercept on the velocity axis
is v0 , the initial velocity. This equation is in fact our first "suvat"
equation. The velocity function of the particle starting at 15 m/s
and accelerating at a constant rate of 5 m/s2 is (see figure 7).
v(t) = 5t + 15
OK, back to finding the displacement area under the smooth

velocity vs. time graph.
Figure 8: A smooth straight velocity

vs. time graph can be approximated
The problem we are facing here is very similar to the problem
to a step graph and the area under
we faced in lesson 4 where we wanted to make sense of an instanta- the smooth graph is approximately
neous velocity. In that case, the problem was solved when Newton the area of the rectangles under the
step graph. This approximation gets
(and others) introduced the concept of a “limit”. We looked at what better and better as the width of the
the limit of average velocities approached as the time interval un- rectangles (that is, the time intervals
during which the velocity is assumed
der consideration got smaller and smaller. Here we do exactly the
to be constant) get smaller and smaller.
same: We imagine the motion being made up of small time inter- Reading from upper-left to lower-
vals during which the velocity is constant (even though it isn’t) and right, the areas are respectively 125
(5 rectangles), 132.25 (10 rectangles),
then we add up all the corresponding rectangular displacement 135.9375 (40 rectangles), and 136.875
areas. In other words, the perfectly straight and smooth velocity vs. time (100 rectangles). These numbers
approach the correct exact answer
graph will be approximated to a step graph. And when the steps get
which is 137.5.
smaller and smaller (corresponding to smaller and smaller time in-
tervals), then the area under the step graph will come closer and closer to
the exact area under the smooth graph, see figure 8.
When these approximations to the area approach the same num-

ber, we define this number to be the area under the smooth graph
and we call it the integral of the velocity function. The notation is
as follows
Z
v(t) dt ≡ lim
∆t→0
∑ vi ∆t
i
= the area under a smooth velocity vs. time graph
This is the crucial step in understanding integral calculus: The area

under any graph can be found by approximating it to a sum of rectangles
of smaller and smaller width.3 A lot can be said about this field of 3
The integral
R symbol (introduced by
mathematics and you will learn that another time, but in this course Leibniz) represents the letter ’s’ for
sum because we are indeed adding up
we will only consider very simple applications. For example, our many terms of the form v∆t.
particle’s velocity increases at a constant rate of 5 m/s2 , so it’s easy
to see that the area under the straight line is in fact just a trapezoid!
Hence, during the first five seconds, the total displacement of the
particle moving according to figure 8 is simply
1
total displacement = area of trapezoid = (5)(15 + 40) = 137.5 m
2
We can check this against our previous approximation using figure
6: When we calculated the approximate area in figure 6 (the same
as the upper-left graph in figure 8), we were missing the five trian-
gular “gaps” under the graph. Each of those triangles had an area
of 2.5 m, so
125 m + 5 · 2.5 m = 137.5 m
Concept #3: The 2nd suvat equation, x = 12 at2 + v0 t + x0
The final step in all this is to now work out an equation for the
position vs. time graph when the acceleration is constant. This will
be our second "suvat" equation, and we obtain it in the following
way: Assume the velocity is increasing at a constant rate (constant,
non-zero acceleration), so the first suvat equation is valid
v = at + v0 (1)
The displacement of the particle is the area under the velocity vs.
time graph, and since that area is a trapezoid (see figure 9), the
displacement after t seconds is4 4
The area formula of a trapezoid is
1
1 A= h(a + b)
∆x = t(v0 + v) 2
2 where a and b are the lengths of the
two parallel sides and h is the height.
Inserting our first suvat equation (1) into this, we get
If you don’t like trapezoids, then view
the area as a triangle and a rectangle
1 1
∆x = t (v0 + (at + v0 )) = at2 + v0 t put together. You get the same result
2 2 of course.
which is a quadratic equation as we know it should be from our

previous lessons! This is our second "suvat" equation. We often
write it out as a position function, by simply remembering that

∆x = x − x0 :
1 2 1 2
x − x0 = at + v0 t ⇒ x(t) = at + v0 t + x0
2 2
Figure 9: The area under a velocity

vs. time graph is the displacement.
Here we use that knowledge to find
the second "suvat" equation.
For example, the position function of the particle we have been

using as an example (initial position 100 m, initial velocity 15 m/s,
and constant acceleration 5 m/s2 ) is
1
x(t) = (5)t2 + 15t + 100
2
Let’s summarise! First our numerical example: If a particle has a
constant acceleration of 5 m/s2 , an initial velocity of 15 m/s, and an
initial position of 100 m, then the motion is completely described by
the three equations:
a(t) = 5
v(t) = 5t + 15
1 2
x(t) = 5t + 15t + 100
2
with corresponding motion graphs shown in figure 10.
The total displacement during the first five seconds can be found
by calculating the total area under the velocity vs. time graph and
in this case it’s just a simple trapezoid shape:
displacement during first five seconds = ∆x

= area under v vs. t = 137.5 m
You can check this against the position motion graph: 100 m +
137.5 m = 237.5 m, which is indeed the position after 5 seconds.
As a final point to note – try to convince yourself of this on your
own – the total change in velocity during a given time interval is the
Figure 10: The three motion graphs

describing the motion of a particle
area under the acceleration vs. time graph, so for this example the total moving with a constant acceleration
change in velocity is of 5 m/s2 , an initial velocity of 15 m/s,
and an initial position of 100 m.
m
∆v = area under a vs. t graph = 5 · 5 s = 25 m/s
s2
which of course agrees with the particle having changed its velocity
from 15 m/s to 40 m/s.
Summary
Here is a general summary: When the acceleration of a particle,

a, is constant (and this includes the case of zero acceleration), the
motion of the particle is completely described by the two suvat
equations
v(t) = at + v0
1 2
x(t) = at + v0 t + x0
2
and
• the displacement during any time interval can be calculated as
the total area under the velocity vs. time graph,
• the change in velocity during any time interval can be calculated

as the total area under the acceleration vs. time graph.
An observant student might notice that the name “suvat” has
something to do with the variables contained in the equations: We
have ’v’, ’a’, and ’t’ of course meaning velocity, acceleration and
time, but what about ’s’ and ’u’? Well we often use the symbol ’u’
to stand for the initial velocity v0 , so often the first suvat equation is
written as
v = at + u (2)
Secondly, ’s’ is an old notation for displacement (from latin: spatium),
so the second suvat equation is often written as (using ’u’ for initial
velocity and remembering displacement is ∆x = x − x0 )
1 2
s= at + ut (3)
2
And there you have them! The famous “suvat” equations covered
in all high-school physics courses around the world. These two
equations, (2) and (3), can be combined to give another two very
useful equations. One comes from eliminating time from the equa-
tions:
eliminate time ⇒ 2as = v2 − u2
and the other one comes from eliminating the acceleration (this
equation has in fact already been mentioned – can you see where?):
1
eliminate acceleration ⇒ s= t(u + v)
2
Finally, let’s briefly talk about what we do if the acceleration
is not constant. In that case we don’t have a simple straight line
velocity graph so it’s difficult to work out an expression for the
displacement (the area under the graph). In these cases you have
to either rely on numerical approximations obtained by looking at
step graphs like we did above (this is actually what really goes on
behind the screen when we use computers to solve complex physics
problems) or you have to know how to use the rules of integral
calculus. Something to look forward to learning another day!
Appendix: Problems
1. When the acceleration is zero, what do the suvat equations re-

duce to? Draw the motion graphs for this special case.
2. Let’s revisit lesson 6, question 3 (c): Use the suvat equations to

calculate
(a) how long it takes for the block to come to rest.

(b) how far it slides before coming to rest.
3. Use the suvat equations (or the other two useful equations) to
answer all the following questions:
(a) What is the speed of a stone 3.0 s after it falls from rest with
a constant acceleration of 10 m/s2 ?
(b) Determine the distance covered by a cart on a track while
it accelerates at 4.0 m/s2 for 0.50 s from an initial speed of
1.0 m/s.
(c) A ball rolls from rest down an inclined plane with a uniform
acceleration of 4.0 m/s2 .
i. What is its speed after 8.0 s?
ii. How long will it take to reach a speed of 36 m/s?
iii. How long does it take to travel a distance of 200 m, and
what is its speed after that time?
iv. How far does it travel during the fourth second of its
motion?
(d) What is the displacement of a cyclist while he accelerates

from 1.5 m/s to 2.5 m/s in 2.0 s? What assumption have you
made?
(e) Calculate the final speed of a runner who accelerates at
0.5 m/s2 from an initial speed of 3.0 m/s while she covered
16 m.
4. A hot-air balloonist, rising vertically with a constant velocity

of magnitude 5.00 m/s, releases a sandbag at an instant when
the balloon is 40.0 m above the ground. Let the ground be po-
sition 0 m. After it is released, the sandbag is in free fall. Use
g = 10 m/s2 and neglect air resistance.
(a) Compute the position and velocity of the sandbag at 0.250 s

and 1.00 s after its release (remember: position is not the same
as displacement!).
(b) How many seconds after its release will the bag strike the
ground?
(c) With what magnitude of velocity does it strike the ground?
(d) What is the greatest height above the ground that the sand-
bag reaches?
Figure 11: Question 6.
(e) Sketch a vs. t, v vs. t, and x vs. t motions graphs for the
motion.
5. A lunar landing craft descends vertically towards the surface of

the Moon with a constant speed of 2.0 m/s. The craft and crew
have a total mass of 15 × 103 kg. Assume that the gravitational
field strength on the Moon is 1.6 N/kg.
(a) During the first part of the descent the upward thrust of the
rocket engines is 24 × 103 N. Show that this results in the craft
moving with a constant speed.
(b) The upward thrust of the engine is increased to 25.5 × 103 N
for the last 18 seconds of the descent.
i. Calculate the acceleration of the craft during this time.
ii. What is the speed of the craft just before it lands?
iii. How far is the craft above the surface of the Moon when
the engine thrust is increased to 25.5 × 103 N?
6. Go through the steps of eliminating time and acceleration from

the suvat equations to derive the other two useful equations
shown at the bottom of page 58.
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A Little Book About Motion

Lesson 1: The birth of modern science

Figure 1: We are surrounded by

Concept #1: Calculus is the language of motion

The key to understanding motion is learning how to describe in-

Figure 2: This seemingly random mess

Concept #2: Science is a way of thinking

The problem of understanding motion puzzled thinkers for a very

understanding our physical reality. The painting on the right shows 9

Figure 3: These two paintings might

• Two identical sheets of paper, one crumpled up into a ball,

Observe carefully as I carry out the demonstrations – were your

2. Based on the previous experiments, answer the question: “Do

In order to truly understand what is happening in the demon-

— Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol I, 1-1

Lesson 2: Being certain about your uncertainties

Figure 1: Legendary physicist Richard

All measurements are uncertain to some degree and drawing

Concept #1: Data tables

In this lesson you will be conducting a small experiment in order

Figure 2: The raw data.

Concept #2: Absolute uncertainty and significant digits nano n 10−9

When a measurement is expressed in this way, we call 1.80 the

Figure 3: The raw data with equip-

Now what about the uncertainty of the distance measurements?

Figure 4: The raw data with equip-

Concept #3: Percentage uncertainty

Now consider one of the time measurements, e.g.

How “good” is this measurement? As we will see later, “good”

5% and 10% slightly imprecise, more than 10% very imprecise,

Concept #4: Accuracy and systematic error

Precision is one thing, but accuracy is something else. Consider

Figure 5: Comparing the two different

Imagine you measure the density6 of a cube to check if it’s alu- 6

Table 2: Densities of some substances.

Figure 6: Error bars are used to visu-

I was once asked to measure the density of a cube of aluminium.

fully understand this aspect of the Universe and hence we need to

Concept #5: Average and standard deviation

Let’s return to our tennis ball experiment. We have measured the

Figure 7: The final processed data.

Concept #6: Random uncertainty

When we calculate the percentage uncertainty of the average quan-

1. One issue is the release force. When I remove my hand from

There are probably more issues/weaknesses to discuss, some

Concept #7: Suggesting improvements

After identifying the causes of the random uncertainties, you al-

1. Instead of releasing the ball by hand, we should devise some sort of

Alternatively, we could film the entire motion and use video

(a) Go to this website and measure your reaction time. Estimate

2. Spreadsheets. Go to the following data tables, make a copy, and

(a) Spreadsheet 1. (b) Spreadsheet 2.

4. It is essential to be able to convert units when doing calculations,

but you want to convert it to kilometers. Since 1 mile = 1.6 km

d = 10 miles = 10(1.6 km) = 16 km

Method 2) “Rates” You construct a multiplying factor in the

d = 10 miles = 10 · 1.6 km = 16 km

23.4 mm = 23.4(10−3 m) = 0.0234 m

(a) Convert 20 ft (20 feet) to meters. (1 ft = 0.3048 m).

5. Analog scales. It was mentioned in the text that the uncertainty

(a) A protractor measuring in degrees:

6. Length: When measuring the length of an object, you often need

Figure 8: Locating the edge of a piece

This is one example of ’error propagation’: When performing

d = 10 miles = 10 · 1.6 km = 16 km