Episode 204: Preparation for Kinematics

In this topic, from the Institute of Physics, students learn to describe motion in terms of displacement, velocity, acceleration and time. There is only a limited discussion of the forces involved as kinematics is concerned with describing motion, while dynamics is concerned with explaining motion in terms of the forces acting.

There are three learning episodes in this topic:

Episode 205: Describing motion

Episode 206: Uniform and non-uniform acceleration

Episode 207: Projectile motion

The activities in the topic will help students to:

1. understand and use the relationships between velocity, acceleration, time and displacement

2. know and use the following equations of motion: s = ut + 1/2at²   v = u + at v²= u² + 2as

3. calculate acceleration from the instantaneous gradient of a velocity time graph

4. calculate displacement from the area under a velocity-time graph

5. understand the independence of horizontal and vertical velocities.

6. describe motion in a uniform gravitational field using the independence of vertical and horizontal velocity

7. use the equations of motion to calculate ranges of horizontally projected bodies.

Students should be familiar with calculations of speed and acceleration. It will help if they are familiar with laboratory methods of determining times, speeds and accelerations using light gates and datalogging equipment.