Describing Motion
What will happen if there is no such thing as
direction to locate an object or a location?
What are some scenarios in your house that direction
or location of an object is very important?
Before you will be able to describe the
motion of an object, you must first be able
to tell exactly where it is positioned.
Describing exact position entails two
ideas: describing how far the object is
from the point of reference and
describing its direction relative to that
point of reference.
Coordinates of different objects along the
number
-15m -10m -5m 0m 5m 10m 15m
1. What is the position of the
cloud?
2. What is the position of the
triangle?
3. What is the position of the cloud
with respect to the heart?
4. What is the position of the
triangle with respect to the cloud?
Position of a rolling ball for the same time
interval
timer 00:00 00:05 00:10 00:15
min sec min sec min sec min sec
0m 5m 10m 15m
4. What is the initial position of
the ball? What is its final
position?
5. What is the position of the
ball at 10 seconds?
6. At what time is the position
of the ball equal to 5 meters?
I. Using graphs
Another way to describe the motion of the ball is by the use of motion graphs.
Convert the diagram of the ball to graph by following the guide below.
Table 1. Position of the ball vs. time
Time (s) Position of the ball (m)
0 0
II. Plotting the values
Plot the values of the position of the ball. Note that time will be plotted on the x-axis and position is plotted on
the y-axis.
Position time graph
7. What is the position of the ball at
25 seconds?
8. At what time is the position of the
ball equal to 25 meters?
9. At what time will the ball reach
20m?
In Science, motion is defined as the change in
position for a particular time interval. You can
start describing motion with the question, “How
far did the object travel?” There are actually
two ways to answer this question. First is by
getting the total length of the path travelled
by the object. The other way is by measuring
the distance between the initial position and
final position of the object.
A. Total length that the person travelled:
___
B. Initial and final position of the person:
___
North
West 10m East
5m
South
10m
In Science, the first measurement gives
the distance travelled by the object
(represented by broken lines) while the
second measurement gives its
displacement (represented by
continuous line).
-Distance refers to the length of the
entire path that the object travelled.
-Displacement refers to the shortest
distance between the object’s two
positions, like the distance between its
point of origin and its point of
destination, no matter what path it
took to get to that destination.
10. What is the difference between
distance and displacement?
11. When can be displacement be
equal to zero?
Speed is the distance travelled divided by
the time of travel.
S= d/t
S- speed
d- distance
t- time
The units of speed can be miles per hour
(mi/h), kilometers per hour (km/h) or
meters per second (m/s)
1. What is the speed of a car covering 10 meters in 10 seconds?
2. What is the speed of a motorcycle covering 100 meters in 10 seconds?
3. Calculate the speed of a ship covering 1000 kilometers in 10 hours.
Speed and Direction
in describing the motion of an object,
we do not just describe how fast the
object moves. We also consider the
direction to where it is going. Speed with
direction is referred to as velocity.
Velocity is speed in a given direction.
V=d/t, direction
v- velocity
d- displacement
t- time
4. Calculate the velocity of a ship travelling North.
The ship covered a distance of 5000 miles in 50
hours.
5. Jessie covered a distance of 1000 km in 10 hours,
while James covered a distance of 1100 km in 10
hours. Both of them were going South, who was the
fastest?
6. Maddie is going North covering a distance of 100
meters in 10 seconds, while Marky is going South
covering a distance of 100 meters in 10 seconds.
They both have the same reference point, will they
meet? What is the velocity of Maddie and Marky?
The speed of each ticker tape.
The speed is fast and in constant speed
The speed is slow and in constant speed
The speed is fast and in constant speed
The speed is increasing
Describe the speed of each number.
The speed is increasing
The speed is fast and in constant
speed
The speed is decreasing
The speed is slow and in constant
speed
Describe the motion of each car.