Today we raced! Students ran and race-walked across the gymnasium, while their peers timed them at distances of 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 feet. 
         Once we had all of our data recorded, we began to analyze it by calculating speed from the distance and time measurements.  
            Tomorrow we will graph and further analyze our data as well as conclude our lab.

We continued our study of acceleration by trying a bunch more practice problems. If you want to watch another version of how to solve acceleration problems, watch this video from Flipping Physics. Something important to learn from the video is that before you can calculate acceleration, all of your units (or dimensions as Mr.P says) must match. If you are solving for acceleration in m/s/s then your velocity must be in m/s and your time must be in seconds.

Mr. Houde took the reins today and helped students learn how to calculate acceleration, as the change in velocity divided by the change in time. One of the more difficult concepts to understand is, why is acceleration measured in meters per seconds squared? Using algebra we were able to show that when dividing velocity (m/s) by time (s) we get: m/s/s or meters per second squared. 

Gold Tape Question:  If you step off a 30m high dive, and you fall (accelerate) for 2.47 seconds, what will your velocity be when you hit the water? (Hint: look up the acceleration of all falling objects on earth first)

Kinematics is the fancy word for the the study of how things move. In class we analyzed and interpreted a Distance vs. Time graph and used that graph to describe the motion of an object, whether it was accelerating, moving with constant speed, or at rest. We were even able to calculate the speed of the moving object based on the coordinates of the graph. In our notebooks, we wrote down definitions for velocity (speed and direction of an object) as well as acceleration (the change in velocity of an object. We finished class with a short video that applies kinematics to a real life situation, in our case, football.