In the above picture the girl is

going really fast. She catches up and passes the boy.

Can you say who is slower? _____________

The boy is slower than the girl. Why do we say that the boy is slower than the girl?
The boy is slower than the girl when the boy takes __________ ________ to cover the _____
___________. We can also say that the speed of the boy is ________ than that of the girl.
So. speed tells us how fast an object is moving.

Learning Outcome - By the end of the lesson, students will be able to define speed. And they will
be able to apply the relation between speed, distance and time to solve problems using
formulae.

How to calculate speed - You need to know the __________ travelled and the __________ it took
to travel that distance.

A formula triangle makes it easy to remember and use the formula:

Rules.
1. Always _________________________.
2. ______ in values and ____________. (make sure values do not have different units of
measurement)
3. Remember to give __________ of measurement.

value symbol question formula units

Problems
1. A car travels at 30 mph for 2 hours. How far has it travelled?
_______________________________

_______________________________
_______________________________

2. A sports car travels at its top speed of 200 km/h. How far will it travel in
A) 5 hours?
B) 30 minutes?
_______________________________ _______________________________
_______________________________ _______________________________
_______________________________ _______________________________

3. A snail travels at 50cm/h. How long will it take to cross a flower bed which is 125 cm wide?
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________

4. In air, sound travels at around 300 m/s. How long does it take to travel 1500m?
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________

5. A goalkeeper shouts at a footballer 100 m away. How long does it take the goal-keeper’s
message to arrive.
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________

6. A plane covers a distance of 1200 miles at a speed of 300 mph. How long will it take to
complete this journey?
_______________________________
_______________________________

_______________________________

7. A sports car travels at its top speed of 200 km/h. How long will it take to travel

A) 400 km?

B) 50 km?

_______________________________ _______________________________
_______________________________ _______________________________
_______________________________ _______________________________

8. A cyclist travels 45 miles in 3 hours. What is the cyclist’s speed?

_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________

9. Work out the average speed for these swimmers. a) Backstroke … 100 m in 60 s, b)
Freestyle … 400m in 230 s
_______________________________ _______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________

10.A train takes 90 minutes to get from Leicester to London. Its average speed is 70 km/h.
What is the distance between London and Leicester?
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________

Why is the time measured in hours and not minutes? ______________________________________

11.A cheetah runs for 4 seconds and catches a daydreaming zebra. The cheetah runs at 100
km/h. How far away was the zebra?
_______________________________
_______________________________ Convert the time
_______________________________ from
seconds to hours
How far is this in metres? ___________ (Not far enough for the zebra!) Why did we convert the
time from seconds to hours? ___________________________________________________________

12.A speed camera takes a picture, then another one 1 second later. The distance travelled
gives the speed of the cars passing the camera. The speed limit is 45 km/h. Who was
speeding?

Driver distance travelled speed Note: t = 1s, = ___________ h

Major bump 15m And d = ___m, = _________ km
May Crash 12m
Mrs Byinches 16m

[Link] walkers are walking up Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon). It is 7 km to the top. It's steep in parts,
so they walk about 1.5 km every hour. It will start getting dark in 4 hours' time. Should they
try to get to the summit and back or wait until tomorrow? What would you do? They have to
walk there and back!
_______________________________
_______________________________
_______________________________

Affirmative checking - Multiple choice

1. To work out Joel's speed in a race, you need to know:

a) the distance he ran and the time he took

b) the distance he ran and the position he finished in
c) the length of his legs and the number of steps he took.

2. If distance is measured in kilometres and time in hours, the speed will be in

a) kiloseconds per metre b) metres per second c) kilometres per hour.

3. The best formula for finding the distance when you know the speed and time is:

a) d = s/t b) d = 2st2 c) d = s x t

4. A car travels at 55 km/h. How long will it take to get to London, 110 km away?

a) 5 hours b) 2 hours c) 30 minutes.

5. A woman leaves home on a horse, travelling at 25 km/h. Two hours later her husband leaves in
a car, travelling at 75 km/h. They are both going to a farm 75 km away. When will they arrive?

a) both at the same time b) the woman first c) the man first.

6. How many seconds in one hour ten minutes?

a) 3600 b) 70 c) 4200.

GRAPHING MOTION

 Describing a journey made by an object is very boring if you just use words. As with
much of science, graphs are more revealing.
 Plotting distance against time can tell you a lot about a journey.
Let's look at the axes:
Time always runs
Distance runs horizontally (the x-axis).
vertically (the y-axis). The arrow shows the
The higher up the direction of time. The
graph we go, the further to the right, the
further we are from longer time from the
the start. start.

If something is not moving, a horizontal line is drawn on a

distance-time graph.
Time is increasing to the right, but its distance does not
change.
This graph shows an object that is stationary.

If something is moving at a steady speed, it means we

expect the same increase in distance in a given time.
Time is increasing to the right, and distance is increasing
steadily with time.
This graph shows an object that moves at a steady,
constant speed
Both the lines below show that each object moved the same
distance, but the steeper yellow line got there before the
other one.
What does this indicate?
__________________________________________________

A steeper slope indicates a larger distance moved in a given time. In other

words, higher speed
Then the object suddenly
For the first part of increased its speed, covering a
the journey, the much larger distance in the
object moved at a same time.
steady (slow) speed.
The speed increased in the
second part of the journey.
The line is curving upwards. This shows an increase
in speed, since the slope is getting steeper over time.
In other words, in a given time, the distance the object
moves is larger. It is accelerating.

There are three parts to the journey shown here… Where is the graph showing motion
that is:

Stopped? _________

Moving at a quick constant speed? _________

Traveling at a slow constant speed? _________

The graph below shows several stages of motion:

Stage 1: 100 m in 10 s.
Stage 2: 50 m in 10 s.
Stage 3: 150 m in 20 s.
Calculate the speeds of each stage, indicated by the colors.

Distance vs. time graphs also indicate the position of the object. Stage 1 & Stage 2:
object is moving away from the starting point. Stage 3: object is moving back toward the
starting point (it comes back to zero)

Remember…
The steeper the line on a distance vs. time graph, the ___________ the object’s speed. A
curved line indicates a _________ in speed (___________________________). Lines pointing up
indicate moving _________ from the starting location. Lines pointing down indicate moving
______________ the starting location.
1. The movement of an object can be described using a distance/time graph. One such graph is shown
below for the motion of a cat. a) What does a horizontal line mean in a
distance-time graph?
______________________________________________
b) What does a line sloping upwards mean in a distance-time graph?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
c) What does the above distance-time graph tell you about the motion of the cat it describes. (HINT: do it
in four separate parts: O-4s, 4-8s, 8-/1Os and 10- 12s and remember, speed = distance ÷ time)

0-4 s: _________________________________________________________________

4-8s: _________________________________________________________________

8-lOs: _________________________________________________________________

10-12s:________________________________________________________________

2. The distance—time graph below shows the journey of a walker.

a) During which part of the journey was the

walker stationary? ____________________________

b) For how long was the walker stationary?

___________________________

c) During which part of the journey was the walker moving fastest?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________

d) Calculate the fastest speed of the walker.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
e) What is the total distance travelled by the walker? ___________________________

f) Calculate the average speed of the walker for the whole journey.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________

Given below is a speed – time graph for a car journey.

 1 st 2 minutes – driver was driving at an

average speed of 13 m/s
 Next 2 minutes , speed was lower – maybe more traffic.
 At 4 minutes, driver slowed down and then stopped.
 Car did not move for almost a minute- maybe a pedestrian crossing.
 At 7 minutes – car stopped suddenly- an emergency stop
 After about 30 seconds, car moved off again.

The speed – time graph below shows the speed of a sprinter in a 100 m race.

1. How long did it take for the sprinter to reach top

speed? __________

2. What was his top speed? __________

3. What was the sprinter’s speed at 2s? __________

4. What was the sprinter’s speed at 1s? __________

5. How far had he run after 10s? __________