Animation 1 | Animation 2 | Animation 3 | Animation 4 | Animation 5 | Animation 6

Please wait for the animation to completely load.

The animations represent the motion of a ball on various surfaces (position is given in meters and time is given in seconds). The "ghosts" are placed at equal time intervals. Such a picture is often called a motion diagram. Restart.

Answer the following questions using the coordinate system specified in each animation by the red arrow. Please indicate ties by ( ). For example a suitable response could be: 1,(2,3),4,5,6.

For parts (a), (b), and (c), use the ghost images to qualitatively rank the quantities.

1. Rank each case from highest to lowest displacement.
2. Rank each case from highest to lowest final velocity.
3. Rank each case from highest to lowest acceleration (assume constant acceleration).

Now use the usual x and y coordinates that you can access by click-dragging in the animation.

4. Calculate the displacement vector for each animation.
5. Calculate the acceleration vector for each animation (assume that in Animation 3 and Animation 6 the ball starts at rest and that in Animation 1 and Animation 4 the ball ends at rest).

Problem authored by Mario Belloni*.

*This exercise was adapted from an original Ranking Task Exercise which appears in the book Ranking Task Exercises in Physics, T. O' Kuma, D. Maloney, and C. Hieggelke.