Speed
Name _____________________________ Class ____________
Athletes run races over set distances. The time they take is measured. The winner is the person who
covers the distance in the shortest time. If you want to find out who was the fastest in different races,
you need to calculate the speed of each athlete.
Example
Jamie Smith ran 50 m in 6 seconds.
speed = distance/time
= 50 m/6 s
= 8.3 m/s
1 The table shows the winning times for different races. Calculate the speed for each athlete and
fill in the last column.
Athlete Race Time (s) Speed (m/s)
Jamie Smith 50 m 6 8.3
Suhail Patel 1000 m 250
Jenny Baker 400 m 70
Rosie Kennett 100 m 13
Andy Groves 200 m 25
Sunita Parekh 800 m 150
2 Which athlete in question 1 was the fastest? _______________________________________
3 The Paralympics is a sporting event held for disabled athletes. Wheelchair races are run over
different distances.
a Scott Jacobs won the 100 m wheelchair race in 20 seconds. How fast was he going?
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
b Sally Malin won the 200 m race in 39 seconds. How fast was she going?
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
c Who was the fastest, Scott or Sally?
______________________________________________________________________
9Ka6 Speed, distance and time
You can remember the formula for speed using this triangle:
You can convert a speed in m/s into mph by multiplying it by 2.237.
You can convert mph to m/s by dividing by 2.237.
Show all your working when answering these questions.
1 An athlete ran 26.2 miles in 180 minutes. How fast was he running? Give your answer in miles
per hour.
2 Jenny ran 100 m in 20 seconds.
a What was Jenny’s speed in m/s?
b What was her speed in mph?
c How long should it take Jenny to run 5 miles? Give your answer in minutes. (Hint: 0.3
hours is not 30 minutes!)
d It actually took Jenny an hour to run 5 miles. Why was her time longer than the time you
calculated in part c?
3 A car attempting to break the land speed record reached a speed of 675 mph.
a How many miles would it travel each second? (Hint: You will need to divide by the
number of seconds in an hour.)
b How long would it take to travel 10 miles? Give your answer in seconds.
c How far would the car travel in 5 seconds at this speed?
4 The slowest mammal is the sloth, with an average speed of about 0.1 mph. The fastest is the
cheetah, with a mean speed of 37 mph.
a What is the speed of the two animals in m/s?
b How far could the cheetah travel in 10 seconds? Give your answer in metres.
c How long would it take the sloth to travel the same distance? Give your answer in
seconds.
d Approximately how many hours is your answer to part c?