KINEMATICS

By the end of this lecture, you should be able to:

• Define position and displacement
• Define average velocity and average speed
• Define instantaneous velocity and acceleration
• Understand and describe motion with constant acceleration
 KINEMATICS
• Kine – Motion, Matics – Analysis
An object’s motion can be described in terms of position, velocity, time and acceleration.
One dimensional Motion
This is motion along a straight line.
The line defines an axis.
Along the line, one has to assign points lying on it numerical values based on a reference frame.
 KINEMATICS
• Kine – Motion, Matics – Analysis
Position and displacement
• Consider a particle moving along a straight line (horizontal or vertical)
• To locate an object implies finding its position relative to some reference point, often the origin (or
zero point) of an axis such as the one below.

• The positive direction of the axis is in the direction of increasing numbers (coordinates), which is
to the right. The opposite is the negative direction.
 KINEMATICS

Position
• Reference point defines the origin.
• From this origin, any point lying along the axis defines the position of the object.
• Position: Defines the location of an object within a specified set of axis.
• Position is a vector quantity, i.e. in one dimensional motion, if to the right reference to the origin is
positive, then to the left is negative. The sign giving direction
 POSITION AND DISPLACEMENT

• A change from position x1 to position x2 is called a displacement , where

• Displacement can be negative or positive.

• Displacement is a vector quantity, i.e., it has both magnitude and direction
• Its magnitude is the distance (such as the number of meters) between the original and final
positions.
• Its direction, from an original position to a final position, can be represented by a plus sign or a
minus sign if the motion is along a single axis.
 AVERAGE VELOCITY AVERAGE SPEED
• For a moving object, its position must change.
• If the position of the object changes with time, then we can define its velocity.
• Velocity can be classified as average velocity or instantaneous velocity
• Average velocity: The rate of change of position.

• Instantaneous velocity: defines the velocity of an object at a particular instant/time., i.e. the change
in time when the object’s position changes must be very small, i.e. approaching zero.
 ACCELERATION

• When a particle’s velocity changes, the particle is said to undergo acceleration (or to accelerate).
• For motion along an axis, the average acceleration aavg over a time interval t is

• The instantaneous acceleratlion is given by,

 MOTION WITH CONSTANT ACCELERATION

• For motion with constant acceleration, the average acceleration and instantaneous acceleration are
the same, thus,

• This gives

Similarly,

Which yields,
 MOTION WITH CONSTANT ACCELERATION

• Substituting v in gives

Substituting vavg in yields

From , we get

Thus,
 MOTION WITH CONSTANT ACCELERATION

• Substituting v in gives

Substituting vavg in yields

From , we get

Thus,