Constant Linear Velocity

Display Options :

Choose one of these styles before pressing play:

X coordinate not shown | X coordinate shown | Ghosted

Description

This is probably your first encounter with a "physlet". The animation has controls very much like the controls on a YouTube video, you can pause and play and rewind. Perhaps most importantly, you can "frame advance". With the animation paused you can click on the red circle and a box will pop up to give the x and y coordinates. The time appears in the upper left corner.

In this animation each frame moves the circle 0.2 meters in the x direction only (check this) and advances the clock by 0.1 second (check this too). If you think for just a moment you might realize that you already know all you need to know to calculate the velocity.

Some physlet animations can provide extra information. For instance the second option makes the x-coordinate visible without the requirement that you "click" on the circle.

The third option leaves a "ghost" of the image at regular intervals of time, in this case every 0.5 seconds. You can pause the animation, gather the position data and calculate the velocity easily.

Examine all three possibilities and be sure each leads to the same answer (2 m/s)