About Lab 4

Lab 4 is about kinematics, the study and description of motion. It is Galileo's description, modernized to include the use of graphical analysis to interpret and understand uniform acceleration and the relationships between distance, time, velocity, and acceleration.

There are several lessons to be learned about motion from this lab

• Velocity depends on both distance and time. 
• Constant velocity plots as a straight line on a distance vs. time graph.
• The steepness or slope of the line on the distance vs. time graph is a measure of velocity. 
• Acceleration is the addition of velocity with elapsed time. 
• Uniform acceleration means that the velocity increases by the same amount in each time interval.
• Accelerated motion plots as a curved line on a distance vs. time graph, but is a straight line on a graph of distance vs. the square of time.
• Increasingly greater distances are traveled in equal time intervals in accelerated motion. 
• Uniformly accelerated motion plots as a straight line on a velocity vs. time graph. 
  The slope of a graph of velocity vs. time represents acceleration while the area of the graph represents the distance traveled. 

Go to the lab.