Graphing Position, Velocity & Acceleration

We are wrapping up one dimensional motion today with all of the key ideas covered. We’ve talked about distance and displacement, speed and velocity and last week we talked about acceleration as the rate of change of the velocity over time.

We talked about how positive acceleration means the velocity is increasing, the object is speeding up, and negative acceleration means the velocity is decreasing, the object is slowing down.

And then, I left you with a few challenge questions...

I asked you to imagine a runner on a track, starting at the starting line and picking up speed at a constant acceleration. That meant that the runner had a positive velocity → because they were moving away from their initial position and a positive acceleration because their velocity was increasing.

Often times, we will see position, velocity and acceleration tracked graphically in physics.

If you can master the skill of graphing, it makes understanding these relationships even easier.

Feel free to pull up a graph right now if it will be easier for you to visualize this.

Time will always be on the x axis side to side and the y axis up and down will either be position, velocity or acceleration.