Workout: Calculating with constant acceleration

Read

Read the web page: Calculating with constant acceleration.

Launch

To give you some practice on working with graphs showing constant acceleration, go to the PhET simulation Moving Man to perform a few tasks. 

Set up

By typing numbers into the starting value spaces, set the man to stand near the tree. Give him a velocity of 0 m/s and an acceleration of 0.5 m/s². Click the boxes to show the velocity and acceleration vectors. Your screen should look like the figure below.

Start the man in motion until he hits the wall, then hit pause to stop recording. Use the playback feature to answer these questions. 

Answer these questions

What happened to the blue position slider as the man moved across the screen? 

1. What happened to the red velocity slider as the man moved across the screen? 

Now look at your position-time, velocity-time and acceleration-time graphs. According to your graphs... 

2. What shape is your position graph? Does this make sense? Why? 
3. What shape is your velocity graph? Does this make sense? Why? 
4. What is the slope of your velocity graph? Does this make sense? Why? 
5. What does the slope of the velocity graph represent? 
6. Describe what happens to the man when he is accelerating?  
7. What is the difference between an object with constant acceleration and an object with constant speed? 

Dave Buehrle Fall, 2016