KinematicswithGraphs
2011-09-20 17:21:00   来源：作文地带    双击单词自动翻译

　　Position vs. Time Graphs　　Position vs. time graphs give you an easy and obvious way of determining an object’s displacement at any given time, and a subtler way of determining that object’s velocity at any given time. Let’s put these concepts into practice by looking at the following graph charting the movements of our friendly ant.

　　Any point on this graph gives us the position of the ant at a particular moment in time. For instance, the point at (2,–2) tells us that, two seconds after it started moving, the ant was two centimeters to the left of its starting position, and the point at (3,1) tells us that, three seconds after it started moving, the ant is one centimeter to the right of its starting position. 　　Let’s read what the graph can tell us about the ant’s movements. For the first two seconds, the ant is moving to the left. Then, in the next second, it reverses its direction and moves quickly to y = 1. The ant then stays still at y = 1 for three seconds before it turns left again and moves back to where it started. Note how concisely the graph displays all this information.　　Calculating Velocity　　We know the ant’s displacement, and we know how long it takes to move from place to place. Armed with this information, we should also be able to determine the ant’s velocity, since velocity measures the rate of change of displacement over time. If displacement is given here by the vector y, then the velocity of the ant is

　　If you recall, the slope of a graph is a measure of rise over run; that is, the amount of change in the y direction divided by the amount of change in the x direction. In our graph,　is the change in the y direction and　is the change in the x direction, so v is a measure of the slope of the graph. For any position vs. time graph, the velocity at time t is equal to the slope of the line at t. In a graph made up of straight lines, like the one above, we can easily calculate the slope at each point on the graph, and hence know the instantaneous velocity at any given time. 　　We can tell that the ant has a velocity of zero from t = 3 to t = 6, because the slope of the line at these points is zero. We can also tell that the ant is cruising along at the fastest speed between t = 2 and t = 3, because the position vs. time graph is steepest between these points. Calculating the ant’s average velocity during this time interval is a simple matter of dividing rise by run, as we’ve learned in math class.

　　Average Velocity　　How about the average velocity between t = 0 and t = 3? It’s actually easier to sort this out with a graph in front of us, because it’s easy to see the displacement at t = 0 and t = 3, and so that we don’t confuse displacement and distance.

　　Average Speed　　Although the total displacement in the first three seconds is one centimeter to the right, the total distance traveled is two centimeters to the left, and then three centimeters to the right, for a grand total of five centimeters. Thus, the average speed is not the same as the average velocity of the ant. Once we’ve calculated the total distance traveled by the ant, though, calculating its average speed is not difficult: