This week we continued to learn about time vs. displacement/distance/position. We continued to see how each one could be plotted on a graph and read to know how fast something was going. Distance is a measure of speed and displacement is a measure of velocity. It is very important to know this difference because they are two seperate measurements and each of them are used to describe something in specific situations. Also, if you didn't know the difference you would have gotten many questions of the assesment that we had this week wrong.
The assesment tested our knowledge of velocity and speed and also reading graphs and interpreting them. Personally, I thought this assesment was pretty challenging. It asked questions that really tested us in putting our knowledge of these concepts into certain problems or situations. Yet, even though it was a harder test, if you paid attention and if you actively participated (whether that be actively listening or participating in the discussion) in class, most of this stuff should easy to apply to test questions.
During this week we did the T-bone challenge where we tried to make one car hit another car right in the middle. I know that we ran out of time, but this was a good experiment to apply speeds, distance and position to a real situation. I remember that the trickiest part was trying to come up with how far away the car should be released from the starting point and how many seconds should elapse in between the release of the two cars.
I do wish we could have finished that experiment because I did like trying to find out all of the measurments and times and everything. But this also raised a question which was: there some sort of equation that we could have done to find out the precise time and distance to let each car go to do the t-bone crash?
This week I think that I had good participation in the dicussions and in the experiments and class demonstrations. I do understand the difference between velocity and speed and also the difference between position, displacement and distance. I do think that I still need work on interpreting graphs and applying my knowledge in situations that I'm givin.
Think about the T-bone challenge as if the cars were traveling side by side in a straight line. How much time after the first car, would you need to release the second car in order for them to reach the same spot at the same time? Then, just move one car into a path that's 90 degrees compared to the other, and you've got it! Applying knowledge is tough to do, but it's just what we do!
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